IN   OUR   TOWN 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON   •   BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


He  wore  his  col-lars  so  high  that  he  had  to  order  them 
from  a  drummer 


In  Our  Town 


BY 


WILLIAM  ALLEN  WHITE 


Illustrations  by  F.  R.  Gruger  and  W.  Glackens 


gorfc 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1919 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT  1906  BV 
MrCLVRE,  PHILLIPS  &-  CO. 


Publhhed 


Copyright  1904  by  The  Century  Co. 
Copyright  1905-1906  by  The  Curtis  Publishing  Co. 


Contents 

1  fAGE 

I.  SCRIBES  AND  PHARISEES     .     .*     .     *  3 

II.  THE  YOUNG  PRINCE 20 

III.  THE  SOCIETY  EDITOR   .....  28 

IV.  "  As  A  BREATH  INTO  THE  WIND  "     .  ;  40 
V.  THE  COMING  OF  THE  LEISURE  CLASS  72 

VI.  THE  BOLTON  GIRL'S      rosmoN        .  8? 
VII.  "  BY  THE  ROD  OF  His  WRATH  "     .  92 
VIII.  "  A  BUNDLE  OF  MYRRH  "      .      .     ,  120 
IX.  OUR  LOATHED  BUT  ESTEEMED  CON- 
TEMPORARY       .35 

X.  A  QUESTION   OF   CLIMATE     .     .      .  148 

XI.  THE  CASTING  OUT  OF  JIMMY  MYERS  160 

XII.  "'A  BABBLED  OF  GREEN  FIELDS"     .  174 

XIII.  A   PILGRIM   IN   THE  WILDERNESS     .  195 

XIV.  THE    PASSING    OF    PRISCILLA    WIN- 

THROP 217 

XV.  "  AND  YET  A  FOOL  " 241 

XVI.  A  KANSAS  "  CHILDE  ROLAND  "     .     .  255 

XVII.  THE  TREMOLO   STOP 297 

XVIII.  SOWN  IN  OUR  WEAKNESS       .     .     .  339 

XIX.  "THIRTY"                                          .  362 


504704 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 

He  Wore  his  Collars  so  High  that  He  Had  to  Order 
Them  from  a  Drummer         .          .          .       Frontispiece 


FACING 
PACK 


Suppressing  Nothing  "On  Account  of  the  Respectability 
of  the  Parties  Concerned" 6 

As  an  Office  Joke  the  Boys  Used  to  Leave  a  Step-Ladder 
by  Her  Desk  so  that  She  Could  Climb  Up  and  See 
How  Her  Top-Knot  Really  Looked  ....  28 

And  Brought  with  Him  a  Large  Leisure  and  a  Taste  for 
Society 72 

Sometimes  He  Thought  It  was  a  Report  of  a  Fire  and  at 
Other  Times  It  Seemed  Like  a  Dress-Goods  Catalogue  84 

As  the  Dinner  Hour  Grew  Near  She  Raged — So  the 
Servants  said — Whenever  the  Telephone  Rang  .  112 

"Jim  Purdy,  Taken  the  Day  He  Left  for  the  Army'*  130 

He  Advertised  the  Fact  that  He  was  a  Good  Hater  by 
Showing  Callers  at  His  Office  His  Barrel  .  .  .136 

He  Likes  to  Sit  in  the  Old  Swayback  Swivel-Chair  and 
Tell  Us  His  Theory  of  the  Increase  in  the  Rainfall  .  156 

And  Camped  in  the  Office  for  Two  Days,  Looking  for 
Jimmy 160 

Reverend  Milligan  Came  in  with  a  Church  Notice  .  172 
A  Desert  Scorpion,  Outcast  by  Society  and  Proud  of  it  .  182 
"He  Made  a  Lot  of  Money  and  Blew  it  in"  .  .  .  244 

Went  About  Town  with  His  Cigar  Pointing  Toward 
his  Hat-Brim  .  .  . 276 

The  Traveling  Men  on  the  Veranda  Craned  Their 
Necks  to  Watch  Her  Out  of  Sight  .  .  .  .348 

Counting  the  Liars  anrt  Scoundrels  and  Double-Dealers 
and  Villains  Who  Pass 366 


IN   OUR  TOWN 


I 

Scribes  and  Pharisees 

OURS  is  a  little  town  in  that  part  of  the 
country  called  the  West  by  those  who 
live  east  of  the  Alleghanies,  and  re- 
ferred to  lovingly  as  "  back  East  "  by  those  who 
dwell  west  of  the  Rockies.  It  is  a  country  town 
where,  as  the  song  goes,  "  you  know  everybody 
and  they  all  know  you,"  and  the  country  news- 
paper office  is  the  social  clearing-house. 

When  a  man  has  published  a  paper  in  a  coun- 
try community  for  many  years,  he  knows  his 
town  and  its  people,  their  strength  and  their 
weakness,  their  joys  and  their  sorrows,  their 
failings  and  their  prosperity — or  if  he  does  not 
know  these  things,  he  is  on  the  road  to  failure, 
for  this  knowledge  must  be  the  spirit  of  his 
paper.  The  country  editor  and  his  reporters 
sooner  or  later  pass  upon  everything  that  inter- 
ests their  town. 

In  our  little  newspaper  office  we  are  all  re- 
porters, and  we  know  many  intimate  things 


4  In  Our  Town 

about  our  people  that  we  do  not  print.  We 
know,  for  instance,  which  wives  will  not  let  their 
husbands  endorse  other  men's  notes  at  the  banks. 
We  know  about  the  row  the  Baptists  are  having 
to  get  rid  of  the  bass  singer  in  their  choir,  who 
has  sung  at  funerals  for  thirty  years,  until  it  has 
reached  a  point  where  all  good  Baptists  dread 
death  on  account  of  his  lugubrious  profundo. 
Perhaps  we  should  take  this  tragedy  to  heart, 
but  we  know  that  the  Methodists  are  having  the 
same  trouble  with  their  soprano,  who  u  flats  " — 
and  has  flatted  for  ten  years,  and  is  too  proud  to 
quit  the  choir  "  under  fire  "  as  she  calls  it;  and 
we  remember  what  a  time  the  Congregational- 
ists  had  getting  rid  of  their  tenor.  So  that  choir 
troubles  are  to  us  only  a  part  of  the  grist  that 
keeps  the  mill  going. 

As  the  merest  incident  of  the  daily  grind,  it 
came  to  the  office  that  the  bank  cashier,  whose 
retirement  we  announced  with  half  a  column  of 
regret,  was  caught  $3500  short,  after  twenty 
years  of  faithful  service,  and  that  his  wife  sold 
the  homestead  to  make  his  shortage  good.  We 
know  the  week  that  the  widower  sets  out,  and 
we  hear  with  remarkable  accuracy  just  when  he 


In  Our  Town  5 

has  been  refused  by  this  particular  widow  or 
that,  and,  when  he  begins  on  a  school-teacher,  the 
whole  office  has  candy  and  cigar  and  mince  pie 
bets  on  the  result,  with  the  odds  on  the  widower 
five  to  one.  We  know  the  woman  who  is  always 
sent  for  when  a  baby  comes  to  town,  and  who  has 
laid  more  good  people  of  the  community  in  their 
shrouds  than  all  the  undertakers.  We  know  the 
politician  who  gets  five  dollars  a  day  for  his 
"  services  "  at  the  polls,  the  man  who  takes  three 
dollars  and  the  man  who  will  work  for  the  good 
of  the  cause  in  the  precious  hope  of  a  blessed 
reward  at  some  future  county  convention.  To 
know  these  things  is  not  a  matter  of  pride;  it 
is  not  a  source  of  annoyance  or  shame ;  it  is  part 
of  the  business. 

Though  our  loathed  but  esteemed  contempo- 
rary, the  Statesman,  speaks  of  our  town  as  "  this 
city,"  and  calls  the  marshal  "  chief  of  police," 
we  are  none  the  less  a  country  town.  Like  hun- 
dreds of  its  kind,  our  little  daily  newspaper  is 
equipped  with  typesetting  machines  and  is 
printed  from  a  web  perfecting  press,  yet  it  is 
only  a  country  newspaper,  and  knowing  this 
we  refuse  to  put  on  city  airs.  Of  course  we  print 


6  In  Our  Town 

the  afternoon  Associated  Press  report  on  the  first 
page,  under  formal  heads  and  with  some  pre- 
tence of  dignity,  but  that  first  page  is  the  parlour 
of  the  paper,  as  it  is  of  most  of  its  contempo- 
raries, and  in  the  other  pages  they  and  we  go 
around  in  our  shirt  sleeves,  calling  people  by 
their  first  names;  teasing  the  boys  and  girls 
good-naturedly;  tickling  the  pompous  members 
of  the  village  family  with  straws  from  time  to 
time,  and  letting  out  the  family  secrets  of  the 
community  without  much  regard  for  the  feelings 
of  the  supercilious. 

Nine  or  ten  thousand  people  in  our  town  go 
to  bed  on  this  kind  of  mental  pabulum,  as  do 
country-town  dwellers  all  over  the  United  States, 
and  although  we  do  not  claim  that  it  is  helpful, 
we  do  contend  that  it  does  not  hurt  them.  Cer- 
tainly by  poking  mild  fun  at  the  shams — the 
town  pharisees — we  make  it  more  difficult  to 
maintain  the  class  lines  which  the  pretenders 
would  establish.  Possibly  by  printing  the 
news  of  everything  that  happens,  suppressing 
nothing  "  on  account  of  the  respectability  of  the 
parties  concerned,"  we  may  prevent  some  evil- 
doers from  going  on  with  their  plans,  but  this 


J 


Suppressing  nothing  "  on  account  of  the  respectability  of 
the  parties  concerned  " 


In  Our  Town  7 

is  mere  conjecture,  and  we  do  not  set  it  down  to 
our  credit.  What  we  maintain  is  that  in  print- 
ing our  little  country  dailies,  we,  the  scribes, 
from  one  end  of  the  world  to  the  other,  get 
more  than  our  share  of  fun  out  of  life  as  we  go 
along,  and  pass  as  much  of  it  on  to  our  neigh- 
bours as  we  can  spare. 

Because  we  live  in  country  towns,  where  the 
only  car-gongs  we  hear  are  on  the  baker's 
waggon,  and  where  the  horses  in  the  fire  depart- 
ment work  on  the  streets,  is  no  reason  why  city 
dwellers  should  assume  that  we  are  natives.  We 
have  no  dialect  worth  recording — save  that 
some  of  us  Westerners  burr  our  "  r's  "  a  little 
or  drop  an  occasional  final  "  g."  But  you  will 
find  that  all  the  things  advertised  in  the  backs 
of  the  magazines  are  in  our  houses,  and  that  the 
young  men  in  our  towns  walking  home  at  mid- 
night, with  their  coats  over  their  arms,  whistle 
the  same  popular  airs  that  lovelorn  boys  are 
whistling  in  New  York,  Portland,  San  Fran- 
cisco or  New  Orleans  that  same  fine  evening. 
Our  girls  are  those  pretty,  reliant,  well-dressed 
young  women  whom  you  see  at  the  summer  re- 
sorts from  Coronado  Beach  to  Buzzard's  Bay. 


8  In  Our  Town 

In  the  fall  and  winter  these  girls  fill  the  colleges 
of  the  East  and  the  State  universities  of  the 
West  Those  wholesome,  frank,  good-natured 
people  whom  you  met  last  winter  at  the  Grand 
Canons  and  who  told  you  of  the  funny  perform- 
ance of  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  "  in  Yiddish  at  the 
People's  Theatre  on  the  East  Side  in  New  York, 
and  insisted  that  you  see  the  totem  pole  in 
Seattle;  and  then  take  a  cottage  for  a  month  at 
Catalina  Island;  who  gave  you  the  tip  about 
Abson's  quaint  little  beefsteak  chop-house  up  an 
alley  in  Chicago,  who  told  you  of  Mrs.  O'Ha- 
gan's  second-hand  furniture  shop  in  Charleston, 
where  you  can  get  real  colonial  stuff  dirt 
cheap — those  people  are  our  leading  citizens, 
who  run  the  bank  or  the  dry-goods  store  or 
the  flour-mill.  At  our  annual  arts  and  crafts 
show  we  have  on  exhibition  loot  from  the  four 
corners  of  the  earth,  and  the  club  woman  who 
has  not  heard  it  whispered  around  in  our  art 
circles  that  Mr.  Sargent  is  painting  too  many 
portraits  lately,  and  that  a  certain  long-legged 
model  whose  face  is  familiar  in  the  weekly  mag- 
azines is  no  better  than  she  should  be — a  club 
woman  in  our  town  who  does  not  know  of  these 


In  Our  Town  9 

things  is  out  of  caste  In  clubdom,  and  women  say 
of  her  that  she  is  giving  too  much  time  to  her 
church. 

'We  take  all  the  beautiful  garden  magazines, 
and  our  terra-cotta  works  are  turning  out  credit- 
able vases — which  we  pronounce  "  vahzes,"  you 
may  be  sure — for  formal  gardens.  And  though 
we  men  for  the  most  part  run  our  own  lawn- 
mowers,  and  personally  look  after  the  work  of 
the  college  boy  who  takes  care  of  the  horse  and 
the  cow  for  his  room,  still  there  are  a  few  of  us 
proud  and  haughty  creatures  who  have  automo- 
biles, and  go  snorting  around  the  country  scar- 
ing horses  and  tooting  terror  into  the  herds  by 
the  roadside.  But  the  bright  young  reporters  on 
our  papers  do  not  let  an  automobile  come  to 
town  without  printing  an  item  stating  its  make 
and  its  cost,  and  whether  or  not  it  is  a  new  one 
or  a  second-hand  one,  and  what  speed  it  can 
make.  At  the  flower  parade  in  our  own  little 
town  last  October  there  were  ten  automobiles  in 
line,  decked  with  paper  flowers  and  laden  with 
pretty  girls  in  lawns  and  dimities  and  linens — 
though  as  a  matter  of  fact  most  of  the  linens 
were  only  "  Indian  head."  And  our  particular 


io  In  Our  Town 

little  country  paper  printed  an  item  to  the  effect 
that  the  real  social  line  of  cleavage  in  the  town 
lies  not  between  the  cut-glass  set  and  the  devotees 
of  hand-painted  china,  but  between  the  real  no- 
bility who  wear  genuine  linen  and  the  base  imi- 
tations who  wear  Indian  head. 

In  some  towns  an  item  like  that  would  make 
people  mad,  but  we  have  our  people  trained  to 
stand  a  good  deal.  They  know  that  it  costs  them 
five  cents  a  line  for  cards  of  thanks  and  resolu- 
tions of  respect,  so  they  never  bring  them  in. 
They  know  that  our  paper  never  permits  "  one 
who  was  there  "  to  report  social  functions,  so 
that  dear  old  correspondent  has  resigned;  and 
because  we  have  insisted  for  years  on  making  an 
item  about  the  first  tomatoes  that  are  served  in 
spring  at  any  dinner  or  reception,  together  with 
the  cost  per  pound  of  the  tomatoes,  the  town 
has  become  used  to  our  attitude  and  does  not 
buzz  with  indignation  when  we  poke  a  risible 
finger  at  the  homemade  costumes  of  the  Ply- 
mouth Daughters  when  they  present  "  The  Mi- 
kado "  to  pay  for  the  new  pipe-organ.  Indeed,  so 
used  is  the  town  to  our  ways  that  when  there  was 
great  talk  last  winter  about  Mrs.  Frelingheysen 


In  Our  Town  it 

for  serving  fresh  strawberries  over  the  ice  cream 
at  her  luncheon  in  February,  just  after  her  hus- 
band had  gone  through  bankruptcy,  she  called 
up  Miss  Larrabee,  our  society  editor,  on  the  tele- 
phone and  asked  her  to  make  a  little  item  saying 
that  the  strawberries  served  by  Mrs.  Freling- 
heysen  at  her  luncheon  were  not  fresh,  but  mere- 
ly sun  dried.  This  we  did  gladly  and  printed  her 
recipe.  So  used  is  this  town  to  our  school  teach- 
ers resigning  to  get  married  that  when  one  re- 
signs for  any  other  reason  we  make  it  a  point  to 
announce  in  the  paper  that  it  is  not  for  the  usual 
reason,  and  tell  our  readers  exactly  what  the 
young  woman  is  going  to  do.*' 

So,  gradually,  without  our  intending  to  estab- 
lish it,  a  family  vernacular  has  grown  up  in  the 
paper  which  our  people  understand,  but  which — 
like  all  other  family  vernaculars — is  Greek  to 
those  outside  the  circle.  Thus  we  say: 

"  Bill  Parker  is  making  his  eighth  biennial 
distribution  of  cigars  to-day  for  a  boy." 

City  papers  would  print  it: 

"  Born  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  W.  H.  Parker,  a 
baby  boy." 

Again  we  print  this  item : 


12  In  Our  Town 

"  Mrs.  Merriman  is  getting  ready  to  lend  her 
fern  to  the  Nortons,  June  15.'* 

That  doesn't  mean  anything,  unless  you  hap- 
pen to  know  that  Mrs.  Merriman  has  the  pret- 
tiest Boston  fern  in  town,  and  that  no  bow- 
window  is  properly  decorated  at  any  wed- 
ding without  that  fern.  In  larger  towns  the  same 
news  item  would  appear  thus : 

"  Cards  are  out  announcing  the  wedding  of 
Miss  Cecil  Norton  and  Mr.  Collis  R.  Hatcher 
at  the  home  of  the  bride's  parents,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  T.  J.  Norton,  1022  High  street,  June  15." 

A  plain  drunk  is  generally  referred  to  in  our 
columns  as  a  "  guest  of  Marshal  Furgeson's  in- 
formal house-party,"  and  when  a  group  of 
drunk-and-disorderlies  is  brought  in  we  feel  free 
to  say  of  their  evening  diversion  that  they  "  spent 
the  happy  hours,  after  refreshments,  playing 
progressive  hell."  And  this  brings  us  to  the 
consideration  of  the  most  important  personage 
with  whom  we  have  to  deal.  In  what  we  call 
"  social  circles,"  the  most  important  personages 
are  Mrs.  Julia  Neal  Worthington  and  Mrs. 
Priscilla  Winthrop  Conklin,  who  keep  two 
hired  girls  and  can  pay  five  dollars  a  week  for 


In  Our  Town  13 

them  when  the  prevailing  price  is  three.  In  finan- 
cial circles  the  most  important  personage  is 
John  Markley,  who  buys  real-estate  mortgages; 
in  political  circles  the  most  important  personage 
is  Charlie  Hedrick  who  knows  the  railroad  at- 
torneys at  the  capital  and  always  can  get 
passes  for  the  county  delegation  to  the  State 
convention;  in  the  railroad-yards  the  most  im- 
portant personage  is  the  division  superintendent, 
who  smokes  ten-cent  cigars  and  has  the  only 
"  room  with  a  bath  "  at  the  Hotel  Metropole. 
But  with  us,  in  the  publication  of  our  newspaper, 
the  most  important  personage  in  town  is  Mar- 
shal Furgeson. 

If  you  ever  looked  out  of  the  car-window  as 
you  passed  through  town,  you  undoubtedly  saw 
him  at  the  depot,  walking  nervously  up  and  down 
the  platform,  peering  into  the  faces  of  strangers. 
He  is  ever  on  the  outlook  for  crooks,  though 
nothing  more  violent  has  happened  in  our  county 
for  years  than  an  assault  and  battery.  But  Mar- 
shal Furgeson  never  relinquishes  his  watch.  In 
winter,  clad  in  his  blue  uniform  and  campaign 
hat,  he  is  a  familiar  figure  on  our  streets ;  and  in 
summer,  without  coat  or  vest,  with  his  big  silver 


1 4  In  Our  Town 

star  on  which  is  stamped  "  Chief  of  Police," 
pinned  to  his  suspender,  he  may  be  seen  at  any 
point  where  trouble  is  least  likely  to  break 
out.  He  is  the  only  man  on  the  town  site 
whom  we  are  afraid  to  tease,  because  he  is 
our  chief  source  of  news;  for  if  we  ruffle  his 
temper  he  sees  to  it  that  our  paper  misses  the 
details  of  the  next  chicken-raid  that  comes  under 
his  notice.  He  can  bring  us  to  time  in  short 
order. 

When  we  particularly  desire  to  please  him  we 
refer  to  him  as  "  the  authorities."  If  the  Palace 
Grocery  has  been  invaded  through  the  back  win- 
dow and  a  box  of  plug  tobacco  stolen,  Marshal 
Furgeson  is  delighted  to  read  in  the  paper  that 
"  the  authorities  have  an  important  clew  and  the 
arrest  may  be  expected  at  any  time."  He  is  "  the 
authorities."  If  "  the  authorities  have  their  eyes 
on  a  certain  barber-shop  on  South  Main  Street, 
which  is  supposed  to  be  doing  a  back-door  beer 
business,"  he  again  is  "  the  authorities,"  and 
contends  that  the  word  strikes  more  terror  into 
the  hearts  of  evil-doers  than  the  mere  name, 
Marshal  Furgeson. 

Next  in  rank  to '"the  authorities,"   in  the 


In  Our  Town  15 

diplomatic  corps  of  the  office,  come  our  adver- 
tisers :  the  proprietors  of  the  White  Front  Dry- 
Goods  Store,  the  Golden  Eagle  Clothing  Store, 
and  the  Bee  Hive.  These  men  can  come  nearer 
to  dictating  the  paper's  policy  than  the  bankers 
and  politicians,  who  are  supposed  to  control 
country  newspapers.  Though  we  are  charged 
with  being  the  "  organ  "  of  any  of  half-a-dozen 
politicians  whom  we  happen  to  speak  of  kindly 
at  various  times,  we  have  little  real  use  for 
politicians  in  our  office,  and  a  business  man  who 
brings  in  sixty  or  seventy  dollars'  worth  of  ad- 
vertising every  month  has  more  influence  with 
us  than  all  the  politicians  in  the  county.  This  is 
the  situation  in  most  newspaper  offices  that  suc- 
ceed, and  when  any  other  situation  prevails, 
when  politicians  control  editors,  the  news- 
papers don't  pay  well,  and  sooner  or  later  the 
politicians  are  bankrupt. 

The  only  person  in  town  whom  all  the  mer- 
chants desire  us  to  poke  fun  at  is  Mail-Order 
Petrie.  Mail-Order  Petrie  is  a  miserly  old 
codger  who  buys  everything  out  of  town  that 
he  can  buy  a  penny  cheaper  than  the  home  mer- 
chants sell  it.  He  is  a  hard-working  man,  so  far 


1 6  In  Our  Town 

as  that  goes,  and  so  stingy  that  he  has  been  ac- 
cused of  going  barefooted  in  the  summer  time  to 
save  shoes.  When  he  is  sick  he  sends  out  of  town 
for  patent  medicines,  and  for  ten  years  he 
worked  in  his  truck-garden,  fighting  floods  and 
droughts,  bugs  and  blight,  to  save  something  like 
a  hundred  dollars,  which  he  put  in  a  mail-order 
bank  in  St.  Louis.  When  it  failed  he  grinned  at 
the  fellows  who  twitted  him  of  his  loss,  and 
said:  "  Oh,  come  easy,  go  easy!  " 

A  few  years  ago  he  subscribed  to  a  matri- 
monial paper,  and  one  day  he  appeared  at  the 
office  of  the  probate  judge  with  a  mail-order 
wife,  who,  when  they  had  been  married  a  few 
)cars,  went  to  an  orphan  asylum  and  got  a  mail- 
order baby.  We  have  had  considerable  sport 
with  Mail-Order  Petrie,  and  he  has  become  so 
used  to  it  that  he  likes  it.  Sometimes  on  dull 
days  he  comes  around  to  the  office  to  tell  us  what 
a  bargain  he  got  at  this  or  that  mail-order  house, 
and  last  summer  he  came  in  to  tell  us  about  a 
great  bargain  in  a  cemetery  lot  in  a  new  ceme- 
tery being  laid  out  in  Kansas  City;  he  bought  it 
on  the  installment  plan,  a  dollar  down  and 
twenty-five  cents  a  month,  to  be  paid  until  he 


In  Our  Town  17 

died,  and  he  bragged  a  great  deal  about  his 
shrewdness  in  getting  the  lot  on  those  terms. 
He  chuckled  as  he  said  that  he  would  be  dead 
in  five  years  at  the  most  and  would  have  a 
seventy-five  dollar  lot  for  a  mere  song.  He 
made  us  promise  that  when  that  time  does  come 
we  will  write  up  his  obsequies  under  the  head 
"A  Mail-Order  Funeral."  He  added,  as  he 
stood  with  his  hand  on  the  door  screen,  that  he 
had  no  use  for  the  preachers  and  the  hypocrites 
in  the  churches  in  this  town,  and  that  he  was 
taking  a  paper  called  the  "  Magazine  of  Mys- 
teries," that  teaches  some  new  ideas  on  religion 
and  that  he  expects  to  wind  up  in  a  mail-order 
Heaven. 

And  this  is  the  material  with  which  we  do  our 
day's  work — Mail-Order  Petrie,  Marshal  Fur- 
geson,  the  pretty  girls  in  the  flower  parade,  the 
wise  clubwomen,  the  cut-glass  society  crowd,  the 
proud  owner  of  the  automobile,  the  "  respectable 
parties  concerned,"  the  proprietor  of  the  Golden 
Eagle,  the  clerks  in  the  Bee  Hive,  the  country 
crook  who  aspires  to  be  a  professional  criminal 
some  day,  "  the  leading  citizen,"  who  spends 
much  of  his  time  seeing  the  sights  of  his  country, 


1 8  In   Our  Town 

the  college  boys  who  wear  funny  clothes  and 
ribbons  on  their  hats,  and  the  politicians,  greedy 
for  free  advertising.  They  are  ordinary  two- 
legged  men  and  women,  and  if  there  is  one  thing 
more  than  any  other  that  marks  our  town,  it  is 
its  charity,  and  the  mercy  that  is  at  the  bottom 
of  all  its  real  impulses. 

^Our  business  seems  to  outsiders  to  be  a  cruel 
one,  because  we  have  to  deal  as  mere  business 
with  such  sacred  things  as  death  and  birth,  the 
meeting  and  parting  of  friends,  and  with  trage- 
dies as  well  as  with  comedies.  This  is  true. 
Every  man — even  a  piano  tuner — thinks  his 
business  leads  him  a  dog's  life,  and  that  it  shows 
him  only  the  seamy  side  of  the  world.  But  our 
business,  though  it  shows  the  seams,  shows  us 
more  of  good  than  of  bad  in  men.  We  are  not 
cynics  in  our  office;  for  we  know  in  a  thousand 
ways  that  the  world  is  good.  We  know  that  at 
the  end  of  the  day  we  have  set  down  more  good 
deeds  than  bad  deeds,  and  that  the  people  in  our 
town  will  keep  the  telephone  bell  ringing  to-mor- 
row, more  to  praise  the  recital  of  a  good  action 
than  they  will  to  talk  to  us  about  some  evil  thing 
that  we  had  to  print. 


In  Our  Town  19 

Time  and  again  we  have  been  surprised  at  the 
charity  of  our  people.  They  are  always  willing 
to  forgive,  and  be  it  man  or  woman  who  takes 
a  misstep  in  our  town — which  is  the  counterpart 
of  hundreds  of  American  towns — if  the  offender 
shows  that  he  wishes  to  walk  straight,  a  thousand 
hands  are  stretched  out  to  help  him  and  guide 
him.  It  is  not  true  that  a  man  or  woman 
who  makes  a  mistake  is  eternally  damned 
by  his  fellows.  If  one  persists  in  wrong  after 
the  first  misdeed  it  is  not  because  sheltering 
love  and  kindness  were  not  thrown  around  the 
wrongdoer.  We  have  in  our  town  women  who 
have  done  wrong  and  have  lived  down  their 
errors  just  as  men  do,  and  have  been  forgiven. 
A  hundred  times  in  our  office  we  have  talked 
these  things  over  and  have  been  proud  of  our 
people  and  of  their  humanity.  We  are  all  neigh- 
bours and  friends,  and  when  sorrow  comes,  no 
one  is  alone.  The  town's  greatest  tragedies  have 
proved  the  town's  sympathy,  and  have  been 
worth  their  cost. 


II 

The  Young  Prince 

WE  have  had  many  reporters  for  our 
little  country  newspaper — some  good 
ones,  who  have  gone  up  to  the  city 
and  have  become  good  newspaper  men;  some 
bad  ones,  who  have  gone  back  to  the  livery- 
stables  from  which  they  sprang;  and  some  in- 
different ones,  who  have  drifted  into  the  insur- 
ance business  and  have  become  silent  partners 
in  student  boarding-houses,  taking  home  the 
meat  for  dinner  and  eating  finically  at  the  second 
table  of  life,  with  a  first  table  discrimination. 
But  of  all  the  boys  who  have  sat  at  the  old  wal- 
nut desk  by  the  window,  the  Young  Prince  gave 
us  the  most  joy.  Before  he  came  on  the  paper  he 
was  bell-boy  at  the  National  Hotel — bell-hop, 
he  called  himself — and  he  first  attracted  our  at- 
tention by  handing  in  personal  items  written  in  a 
fat,  florid  hand.  He  seemed  to  have  second 
sight.  He  knew  more  news  than  anyone  else  in 
town — who  had  gone  away,  who  was  entertain- 

20 


In  Our  Town  21 

ing  company,  who  was  getting  married,  and  who 
was  sick  or  dying. 

The  day  the  Young  Prince  went  to  work  he 
put  on  his  royal  garment — a  ten-dollar  ready- 
made  costume  that  cost  him  two  weeks'  hard 
work.  But  it  was  worth  the  effort.  His  freckled 
face  and  his  tawny  shock  of  red  hair  rose  above 
the  gorgeous  plaid  of  the  clothes  like  a  prairie 
sunset,  and  as  he  pranced  off  down  the  street  he 
was  clearly  proud  of  his  job.  This  pride  never 
left  him.  He  knew  all  the  switchmen  in  the  rail- 
road yards,  all  the  girls  in  the  dry-goods  stores, 
all  the  boys  on  the  grocers'  waggons,  all  the 
hack-drivers  and  all  the  barbers  in  town. 

These  are  the  great  sources  of  news  for  a 
country  daily.  The  reporter  who  confines  his 
acquaintance  to  doctors,  lawyers,  merchants  and 
preachers  is  always  complaining  of  dull  days. 

But  there  was  never  a  dull  day  with  the 
Young  Prince.  When  he  could  get  the  list  of 
"  those  present "  at  a  social  function  in  no 
other  way,  he  called  up  the  hired  girl  of  the 
festal  house — we  are  such  a  small  town  that 
only  the  rich  bankers  keep  servants — and 
"  made  a  date  "  with  her,  and  the  names  always 


22  In  Our  Town 

appeared  in  the  paper  the  next  day;  whereupon 
the  proud  hostess,  who  thought  it  was  bad  form 
to  give  out  the  names  of  her  guests,  sent  down 
and  bought  a  dozen  extra  copies  of  the  paper 
to  send  away  to  her  Eastern  kin.  He  knew  all 
the  secrets  of  the  switch  shanty.  Our  paper 
printed  the  news  of  a  change  in  the  general 
superintendent's  office  of  the  railroad  before  the 
city  papers  had  heard  of  it,  and  we  usually 
figured  it  out  that  the  day  after  the  letter  deny- 
ing our  story  had  come  down  from  the  Superin- 
tendent's office  the  change  would  be  officially 
announced. 

One  day  when  the  Prince  was  at  the  depot 
"  making  the  train  "  with  his  notebook  in  his 
hand,  jotting  down  the  names  of  the  people  who 
got  on  or  off  the  cars,  the  general  superintendent 
saw  him,  and  called  the  youth  to  his  car. 

"  Well,  kid,"  said  the  most  worshipful  one 
in  his  teasingest  voice,  "  What's  the  latest  news 
at  the  general  offices  to-day?  " 

The  Young  Prince  turned  his  head  on  one  side 
like  a  little  dog  looking  up  at  a  big  dog,  and  re- 
plied: 

>l  Well,  if  you  must  know  it,  you're  going  to 


In  Our  Town  23 

get  the  can,  though  we  ain't  printing  it  till  you've 
got  a  chance  to  land  somewhere  else." 

The  longer  the  Prince  worked  the  more 
clothes  he  bought.  One  of  his  most  effective 
creations  was  a  blue  serge  coat  and  vest,  and  a 
pair  of  white  duck  trousers  linked  by  emotional 
red  socks  to  patent-leather  shoes.  This  confec- 
tion, crowned  with  a  wide,  saw-edged  straw  hat 
with  a  blue  band,  made  him  the  brightest  bit  of 
colour  on  the  sombre  streets  of  our  dull  town. 
He  wore  his  collars  so  high  that  he  had  to  order 
them  of  a  drummer,  and  as  he  came  down  street 
from  the  depot,  riding  magnificently  with  the 
'bus-driver,  after  the  train  had  gone,  the  clerks 
used  to  cry:  "Look  out  for  your  horses;  the 
steam-piano  is  coming !  " 

But  it  didn't  aftect  the  Young  Prince.  If  he 
happened  to  have  time  and  was  feeling  like  it, 
he  would  climb  down  over  the  rear  end  of  the 
'bus  and  chase  his  tormentor  into  the  back  of 
the  store  where  he  worked,  but  generally  the 
Young  Prince  took  no  heed  of  the  jibes  of  the 
envious.  He  was  conscious  that  he  was  cutting 
a  figure,  and  this  consciousness  made  him  proud. 
But  his  pride  did  not  cut  down  the  stack  of  copy 


24  In  Our  Town 

that  he  laid  on  the  table  every  morning  and 
every  noon.  He  couldn't  spell  and  he  was  inno- 
cent of  grammar,  and  every  line  he  wrote  had 
to  be  edited,  but  he  got  the  news.  He  was  every 
where.  He  rushed  down  the  streets  after  an 
item,  dodging  in  and  out  of  stores  and  offices  like 
a  streak  of  chain  lightning  having  a  fit.  But  it 
was  beneath  his  dignity  to  run  to  fires.  When  the 
fire-bell  rang,  he  waited  nonchalantly  on  the  cor- 
ner near  the  fire-department  house,  and  as  the 
crowds  parted  to  let  the  horses  dash  by  on  the 
dead  run,  he  would  walk  calmly  to  the  middle  of 
the  street,  put  his  notebook  in  his  pocket,  and,  as 
the  fire-team  plunged  by,  he  would  ostentatiously 
throw  out  a  stiff  leg  behind  him  like  the  tail  of  a 
comet,  and  "  flip "  onto  the  end  of  the  fire- 
waggon.  Then  he  would  turn  slowly  around, 
raise  a  hand,  and  wiggle  his  fingers  patronisingly 
at  the  girls  in  front  of  the  Racket  Store  as  he 
flew  past,  swaying  his  body  with  the  motion  of 
the  rolling,  staggering  cart. 

Other  reporters  who  have  been  on  the  paper 
— the  good  ones  as  well  as  the  bad — have  had  to 
run  the  gauntlet  of  the  town  jokers  who  delight 
to  give  green  reporters  bogus  news,  or  start  them 


In  Our  Town  25 

out  hunting  impossible  items.  But  the  man  who 
soberly  told  the  Young  Prince  that  O.  F.  C.  Tay- 
lor was  visiting  at  the  home  of  the  town  drunk- 
ard, or  that  W.  H.  McBreyer  had  accepted  a 
position  in  a  town  drug-store,  only  got  a  wink 
and  a  grin  from  the  boy.  Neither  did  the  town 
wags  fool  him  by  giving  him  a  birth  announce- 
ment from  the  wrong  family,  nor  a  wedding 
where  there  was  none.  He  was  wise  as  a  serpent. 
Where  he  got  his  wisdom,  no  one  knows. 
He  had  the  town  catalogued  in  a  sort  of 
rogues'  directory — the  liars  and  the  honest  men 
set  apart  from  one  another,  and  it  was  a  classifi- 
cation that  would  not  have  tallied  with  the 
church  directories  nor  with  the  town  blue-book 
nor  with  the  commercial  agency's  reports.  The 
sheep  and  the  goats  in  the  Young  Prince's  record 
would  have  been  strangers  to  one  another  if  they 
could  have  been  assembled  as  he  imagined  them. 
But  he  was  generally  right  in  his  estimates  of 
men.  He  had  a  sixth  sense  for  sham. 

The  Young  Prince  had  the  sense  to  know  the 
truth  and  the  courage  to  write  it.  This  is  the 
essence  of  the  genius  that  is  required  to  make  a 
good  newspaper  man.  No  paper  has  trouble  get- 


26  In  Our  Town 

ting  reporters  who  can  hand  in  copy  that  records 
events  from  the  outside.  Any  blockhead  can  go 
to  a  public  meeting  and  bring  in  a  report  that 
has  the  words  "  as  follows  "  scattered  here  and 
there  down  the  columns.  But  the  reporter  who 
can  go  and  bring  back  the  soul  of  the  meeting, 
the  real  truth  about  it — what  the  inside  fights 
meant  that  lay  under  the  parliamentary  polite- 
nesses of  the  occasion ;  who  can  see  the  wires  that 
reach  back  of  the  speakers,  and  see  the  man  who 
is  moving  the  wires  and  can  know  why  he  is 
moving  them ;  who  can  translate  the  tall  talking 
into  history — he  is  a  real  reporter.  And  the 
Young  Prince  was  that  kind  of  a  youth.  He  went 
to  the  core  of  everything;  and  if  we  didn't  dare 
print  the  truth — as  sometimes  we  did  not — he 
grumbled  for  a  week  about  his  luck.  As  pas- 
sionately as  he  loved  his  clothes,  he  was  always 
ready  to  get  them  dirty  in  the  interests  of  his 
business. 

For  three  years  his  nimble  feet  pounded  the 
sidewalks  of  the  town.  He  knew  no  business 
hours,  and  ate  and  slept  with  his  work.  He  never 
ceased  to  be  a  reporter — never  took  off  his 
make-up,  never  let  down  from  his  exalted  part. 


In  Our  Town  27 

One  day  he  fell  sick  of  a  fever,  and  for  three 
weeks  fretted  and  fumed  in  delirium.  In  his 
dreams  he  wrote  pay  locals,  and  made  trains,  and 
described  funerals,  got  lists  of  names  for  the 
society  column,  and  grumbled  because  his  stuff 
was  cut  or  left  over  till  the  next  day.  When  he 
awoke  he  was  weak  and  wan,  and  they  felt  that 
they  must  tell  him  the  truth. 

The  doctor  took  the  boy's  hands  and  told  him 
very  simply  what  they  feared.  He  looked  at  the 
man  for  a  moment  in  dumb  wonder,  and  sighed 
a  long,  tired  sigh.  Then  he  said:  "Well,  if  I 
must,  here  goes  " — and  turned  his  face  to  the 
wall  and  closed  his  eyes  without  a  tremor. 

And  thus  the  Young  Prince  went  home. 


Ill 

The  Society  Editor 

THEY  say  that  in  the  newspaper  offices 
of  the  city  men  work  in  ruts;  that 
the  editorial  writer  never  reports  an 
item,  no  matter  how  much  he  knows  of  it; 
that  a  reporter  is  not  allowed  to  express  an 
editorial  view  of  a  subject,  even  though  he  be 
well  qualified  to  speak;  but  on  our  little  coun- 
try daily  newspaper  it  is  entirely  different.  We 
work  on  the  interchangeable  point  system. 
Everyone  writes  items,  all  of  us  get  advertising 
and  job-work  when  it  comes  our  way,  and  when 
one  of  us  writes  anything  particularly  good,  it  is 
marked  for  the  editorial  page.  The  religious 
reporter  does  the  racing  matinee  in  Wildwood 
Park,  and  the  financial  editor  who  gets  the 
market  reports  from  the  feed-store  men  also 
gets  any  church  news  that  comes  along. 

The  only  time  we  ever  established  a  depart- 
ment was  when  we  made  Miss  Larrabee  so- 
ciety editor.  She  came  from  the  high  school, 

28 


In  Our  Town  29 

where  her  graduating  essay  on  Kipling  at- 
tracted our  attention,  and,  after  an  office  coun- 
cil had  decided  that  a  Saturday  society  page 
would  be  a  paying  proposition. 

At  first,  say  for  six  months  after  she  came  to 
the  office,  Miss  Larrabee  devoted  herself  to  the 
accumulation  of  professional  pride.  This  pride 
was  as  much  a  part  of  her  life  as  her  pompa- 
dour, which  at  that  time  was  so  high  that  she 
had  to  tiptoe  to  reach  it.  However  she  man- 
aged to  keep  it  up  was  the  wonder  of  the  office. 
Finally,  we  all  agreed  that  she  must  use  chicken- 
fence.  She  denied  this,  but  was  inclined  to  be 
good-natured  about  it,  and,  as  an  office-joke, 
the  boys  used  to  leave  a  step-ladder  by  her  desk 
so  that  she  could  climb  up  and  see  how  her  top- 
knot really  looked.  Nothing  ruffled  her  spirits, 
and  we  soon  quit  teasing  her  and  began  to 
admire  her  work.  In  addition  to  filling  six 
columns  of  the  Saturday's  paper  with  her  so- 
ciety report  in  a  town  where  a  church  social  is 
important  enough  to  justify  publishing  the 
names  of  those  who  wait  on  the  tables,  Miss 
Larrabee  was  a  credit  to  the  office. 

She  was  always  invited  to  the  entertainments 


30  In  Our  Town 

at  the  homes  of  the  Worthingtons  and  the  Conk- 
lins,  who  had  stationary  wash-tubs  in  the  base- 
ments of  their  houses,  and  who  ate  dinner  instead 
of  supper  in  the  evening;  and  when  she  put  on 
what  the  boys  called  her  trotting  harness,  her 
silk  petticoats  rustled  louder  than  any  others  at 
the  party.  One  day  she  suddenly  dropped  her 
pompadour  and  appeared  with  her  hair  parted 
in  the  middle  and  doused  over  her  ears  in  long, 
undulating  billows.  No  other  girl  in  town  came 
within  a  quarter  of  an  inch  of  Miss  Larrabee's 
dare.  When  straight-fronts  became  stylish,  Miss 
Larrabee  was  a  vertical  marvel,  and  when 
she  rolled  up  her  sleeves  and  organized  a  coun- 
try club,  she  referred  to  her  shoes  as  boots  and 
took  the  longest  steps  in  town.  But  with  it  all 
she  was  no  mere  clothes-horse.  We  drilled  it 
into  her  head  during  her  first  two  weeks  that 
"  society  "  news  in  a  country  town  means  not 
merely  the  doings  of  the  cut-glass  set,  but  that 
it  means  as  well  the  doings  of  the  Happy  Hop- 
pers, the  Trundle-Bed  Trash,  the  Knights  of 
Columbus,  the  Rathbone  Sisters,  the  King's 
Daughters,  the  Epworth  League,  the  Christian 
Endeavourers,  the  Woman's  Relief  Corps,  the 


In  Our  Town  31 

Ladies'  Aid  and  the  Home  Missionary  Societies, 
Miss  Nelson's  Dancing  Class,  the  Switchmen's 
annual  ball — if  we  get  their  job-work — and 
every  kindred,  every  tribe,  except  such  as  gather 
in  what  is  known  as  "  kitchen  sweats  "  and  occa- 
sionally send  in  calls  for  the  police.  When  Miss 
Larrabee  got  this  into  her  head  she  began  to 
groan  under  her  burden,  and  by  the  end  of  the 
year,  though  she  had  great  pride  in  her  profes- 
sion, she  affected  to  loathe  her  department. 

Weddings  were  her  especial  abominations. 
When  the  first  social  cloud  appeared  on  the 
horizon  indicating  the  approach  of  a  series  of 
showers  for  the  bride  which  would  culminate  in 
a  cloudburst  at  some  stone  church,  Miss  Larra- 
bee would  begin  to  rumble  like  distant  thunder 
and,  as  the  storm  grew  thicker,  she  would  flash 
out  crooked  chain-lightning  imprecations  on  the 
heads  of  the  young  people,  their  fathers  and 
mothers  and  uncles  and  aunts.  By  the  day  of 
the  wedding  she  would  be  rolling  a  steady 
diapason  of  polite,  decolourised,  expurgated, 
ladylike  profanity. 

While  she  sat  at  her  desk  writing  the  stereo- 
typed account  of  the  event,  it  was  like  picking 


32  In  Our  Town 

up  a  live  wire  to  speak  to  her.  As  she  wrote,  we 
could  tell  at  just  what  stage  she  had  arrived  in 
her  copy.  Thus,  if  she  said  to  the  adjacent  at- 
mosphere, "  What  a  whopper!  "  we  knew  that 
she  had  written,  "  The  crowning  glory  of  a 
happy  fortnight  of  social  gatherings  found  its 

place   when "    and   when    she    hissed   out, 

"  Mortgaged  clear  to  the  eaves  and  full  of  in- 
stallment furniture !  "  we  felt  that  she  had 
reached  a  point  something  like  this :  "  After  the 
ceremony  the  gay  party  assembled  at  the  palatial 
home."  In  a  moment  she  would  snarl:  "  I  am 
dead  tired  of  seeing  Mrs.  Merriman's  sprawly 
old  fern  and  the  Bosworth  palm.  I  wish  they 
would  stop  lending  them !  "  and  then  we  realised 
that  she  had  reached  the  part  of  her  write-up 
which  said :  "  The  chancel  rail  was  banked  with  a 
profusion  of  palms  and  ferns  and  rare  trop- 
ical plants."  She  always  groaned  when  she 
came  to  the  "  simple  and  impressive  ring  cere*- 
mony."  When  she  wrote : 

"  The  distinguished  company  came  forward 
to  offer  congratulations  to  the  newly-wedded 
pair,"  she  would  say  as  she  sharpened  her 
pencil-point :  "  There's  nothing  like  a  wedding 


In  Our  Town  33 

to  reveal  what  a  raft  of  common  kin  people 
have,"  and  we  knew  that  it  was  all  over  and 
that  she  was  closing  the  article  with:  "A  daz- 
zling array  of  costly  and  beautiful  presents  was 
exhibited  in  the  library,"  for  then  she  would  pick 
up  her  copy,  dog-ear  the  sheets,  and  jab  them 
on  the  hook  as  she  sighed:  "Another  great 
American  pickle-dish  exhibit  ended." 

In  the  way  she  did  two  things  Miss  Larrabee 
excited  the  wonder  and  admiration  of  the  office. 
One  was  the  way  that  she  kept  tab  on  brides.  We 
heard  through  her  of  the  brides  who  could 
cook,  and  of  those  who  were  beginning  life  by 
accumulating  a  bright  little  pile  of  tin  cans  in 
the  alley.  She  knew  the  brides  who  could 
do  their  own  sewing  and  those  who  could  not. 
She  had  the  single  girl's  sniff  at  the  bride  who 
wore  her  trousseau  season  after  season,  made 
over  and  fixed  up,  and  she  gave  the  office  the 
benefit  of  her  opinion  of  the  husband  in  the  case 
who  had  a  new  tailor-made  suit  every  fall  and 
spring.  She  scented  young  married  troubles 
from  afar,  and  we  knew  in  the  office  whether 
his  folks  were  edging  up  on  her,  or  her  people 
were  edging  up  on  him.  If  a  young  married 


34  In  Our  Town 

man  danced  more  than  twice  in  one  evening 
with  anyone  but  his  wife,  Miss  Larrabee  made 
faces  at  his  back  when  he  passed  the  office  win- 
dow, and  if  she  caught  a  young  married  woman 
flirting,  Miss  Larrabee  regaled  us  by  telling 
with  whom  the  woman  in  question  had  opened 
a  "  fresh  bottle  of  emotions." 

The  other  way  in  which  Miss  Larrabee  dis- 
played genius  for  her  work  was  in  describing 
women's  costumes.  Three  or  four  times  a  year, 
when  there  are  large  social  gatherings,  we  print 
descriptions  of  the  women's  gowns.  Only  three 
women  in  our  town,  Mrs.  Worthington,  Mrs. 
Conklin,  and  the  second  Mrs.  Markley,  have 
more  than  one  new  party  dress  in  a  twelve- 
month, and  most  of  the  women  make  a  party 
gown  last  two  or  three  years.  Miss  Larrabee 
was  familiar  with  every  dress  in  town.  She 
knew  it  made  over,  and  no  woman  was  cunning 
enough  to  conceal  the  truth  even  with  a  spangled 
yoke,  a  chiffon  bertha,  or  a  net  overdress;  yet 
Miss  Larrabee  would  describe  the  gown,  not 
merely  twice,  but  half  a  dozen  times,  so  that 
the  woman  wearing  it  might  send  the  descrip- 
tion to  her  relatives  back  East  without  arous« 


In  Our  Town  35 

ing  their  suspicion  that  she  was  wearing  the 
same  dress  year  after  year.  Therefore,  when- 
ever Miss  Larrabee  wrote  up  the  dresses  worn 
at  a  party,  we  were  sure  to  sell  from  fifty 
to  a  hundred  extra  papers.  She  could  so  turn 
a  breastpin  and  a  homemade  point-lace  hand- 
kerchief tucked  in  the  front  of  a  good  old 
lady's  best  black  satin  into  "  point-lace  and  dia- 
monds," that  they  were  always  good  for  a  dozen 
copies  of  the  paper,  and  she  never  overlooked 
the  dress  of  the  wife  of  a  good  advertiser,  no 
matter  how  plain  it  might  be. 

She  was  worth  her  wages  to  the  office  merely 
as  a  compendium  of  shams.  She  knew  whether 
the  bridal  couple,  who  announced  that  they 
would  spend  their  honeymoon  in  the  East,  were 
really  going  to  Niagara  Falls,  or  whether  they 
were  going  to  spend  a  week  with  his  relatives 
in  Decatur,  Illinois.  She  knew  every  woman  in 
town  who  bought  two  prizes  for  her  whist 
party — one  to  give  if  her  friend  should  win  the 
prize,  and  another  to  give  if  the  woman  she 
hated  should  win.  With  the  diabolical  eye 
of  a  fiend  she  detected  the  woman  who  was 
wearing  the  dry-cleaned  cast-off  clothing  of  her 


36  In  Our  Town 

sister  in  the  city.  What  she  saw  the  office  knew, 
though  she  kept  her  conclusions  out  of  the  paper 
if  they  would  do  any  harm  or  hurt  anyone's  feel- 
ings. No  pretender  ever  dreamed  that  she  was 
not  fooling  Miss  Larrabee.  She  was  willing 
to  agree  most  sympathetically  with  Mrs.  Conk- 
lin,  who  insisted  that  the  "  common  people  " 
wouldn't  be  interested  in  the  list  of  names  at 
her  party;  and  the  only  place  where  we  ever  saw 
Miss  Larrabee's  claw  in  print  was  in  the  insis- 
tent misspelling  of  the  name  of  a  woman  who 
made  it  a  point  to  ridicule  the  paper. 

We  have  had  other  girls  around  the  office 
since  Miss  Larrabee  left,  but  they  do  not  seem  to 
get  the  work  done  with  any  system.  She 
was  not  only  industrious  but  practical.  Friday 
mornings,  when  her  work  piled  up,  instead  of 
fussing  around  the  office  and  chattering  at  the 
telephone,  she  would  dive  into  her  desk  and 
bring  up  her  regular  list  of  adjectives.  These 
she  would  copy  on  three  slips,  carefully  dividing 
the  list  so  that  no  one  had  a  duplicate,  and  in 
the  afternoon  each  of  the  boys  received  a  slip 
with  a  list  of  parties,  and  with  instructions  to 
scatter  the  adjectives  she  had  given  him 


In  Our  Town  37 

through  the  accounts  of  the  parties  assigned  to 
him — and  the  work  was  soon  done.  There  was 
no  scratching  the  head  for  synonyms  for 
"beautiful,"  "superb"  or  "elegant"  Miss 
Larrabee  had  doled  out  to  each  of  us  the  ad- 
jectives necessary,  and,  given  the  adjectives, 
society  reporting  is  easy.  The  editing  of  the 
copy  is  easy  also,  for  one  does  not  have  to  re- 
member whether  or  not  the  refreshments  were 
"  delicious  "  at  the  Jones  party  when  he  sees 
the  word  in  connection  with  the  viands  at  the 
Smith  party.  No  two  parties  were  ever  "  ele- 
gant "  the  same  week.  No  two  events  were 
"  charming."  No  two  women  were  "  exquis- 
itely "  gowned.  The  person  who  was  assigned 
the  adjective  "  delightful  "  by  Miss  Larrabee 
might  stick  it  in  front  of  a  luncheon,  pin  it  on  a 
hostess,  or  use  it  for  an  evening's  entertainment. 
But  he  could  use  it  only  once.  And  with  a  list 
of  those  present  and  the  adjectives  thereunto 
appertaining,  even  a  new  boy  could  get  up  a 
column  in  half  an  hour.  She  had  an  artist's 
pride  in  the  finished  work,  however  much  she 
might  dislike  the  thing  in  making,  and  she  used 
to  sail  down  to  the  press-room  as  soon  as  the 


38  In  Our  Town 

paper  was  out,  and,  picking  up  the  paper  from 
the  folder,  she  would  stand  reading  her  page, 
line  upon  line,  precept  upon  precept,  though 
every  word  and  syllable  was  familiar  to  her. 

During  her  first  year  she  joined  the  Woman's 
State  Press  Club,  but  she  discovered  that  she 
was  the  only  real  worker  in  the  club  and 
never  attended  a  second  meeting.  She  told  us 
that  too  many  of  the  women  wore  white  stock- 
ings and  low  shoes,  read  their  own  unpublished 
short  stories,  and  regarded  her  wide-shouldered 
shirtwaist  and  melodramatic  openwork  hosiery 
with  suspicion  and  alarm. 

As  the  years  passed,  and  wedding  after  wed- 
ding sizzled  under  her  pen,  she  complained  to 
us  that  she  was  beginning  to  be  called  "  auntie  " 
in  too  many  houses,  and  that  the  stock  of  avail- 
able young  men  who  didn't  wear  their  hand- 
kerchiefs under  their  collars  at  the  dances  had 
dwindled  down  to  three.  This  reality  faces  every 
girl  who  lives  in  a  country  town.  Then  she  is 
left  with  two  alternatives:  to  go  visiting  or  to 
begin  bringing  them  up  by  hand. 

Miss  Larrabee  went  visiting.  At  the  end  of 
a  month  she  wrote:  "  It's  all  over  with  me.  He 


In  Our  Town  39 

is  a  nice  fellow,  and  has  a  job  doing  '  Live 
Topics  About  Town  '  here  on  the  Sun.  Give 
my  job  to  the  little  Wheatly  girl,  and  tell  her 
to  quit  writing  poetry,  and  hike  up  her  dress  in 
the  back.  My  adjectives  are  in  the  left-hand 
corner  of  the  desk  under  *  When  Knighthood 
Was  in  Flower.'  And  do  you  suppose  you  could 
get  me  and  the  grand  keeper  of  the  records  and 
seals  a  pass  home  for  Christmas  if  I'd  do  you  a 
New  York  letter  some  time  ? 

"  They  say  these  city  papers  are  hog  tight  1  " 


IV 

"  As  a  Breath  into  the  Wind  " 

WE  are  proud  of  the  machinery  in 
our  office — the  two  linotypes,  the  big 
perfecting  press  and  the  little  job- 
bers. They  are  endowed  by  office  traditions 
with  certain  human  attributes — having  their 
moods  and  vagaries  and  tantrums — so  we  love 
them  as  men  love  children.  And  this  is  a  queer 
thing  about  them :  though  our  building  is  pocked 
with  windows  that  are  open  by  day  seven  months 
in  the  year,  and  though  the  air  of  the  building  is 
clean  enough,  save  for  the  smell  of  the  ink,  yet 
at  night,  after  the  machines  have  been  idle  for 
many  hours  and  are  probably  asleep,  the  place 
smells  like  the  lair  of  wild  animals.  By  day 
they  are  as  clean  as  machines  may  be  kept 
And  even  in  the  days  when  David  Lewis  petted 
them  and  coddled  them  and  gave  them  the  core 
of  his  heart,  they  were  speckless,  and  bright  as 
his  big,  brown,  Welsh  eyes,  but  the  night  stinks 

of  them  were  rank  and  beastly. 
40 


In  Our  Town  41 

David  came  to  us,  a  stray  cat,  fifteen  years 
ago.  He  was  too  small  to  wrestle  with  the 
forms — being  cast  in  the  nonpareil  mould  of  his 
race — and  so  we  put  him  to  carrying  papers. 
In  school  season  he  seemed  to  go  to  school,  and 
in  summer  it  is  certain  that  he  put  a  box  on  a 
high  stool  in  the  back  room,  and  learned  the 
printer's  case,  and  fed  the  job  presses  at  odd 
times,  and  edged  on  to  the  pay-roll  without  ever 
having  been  formally  hired.  In  the  same  sur- 
reptitious manner  he  slipped  a  cot  into  the 
stockroom  upstairs  and  slept  there,  and  finally 
had  it  fitted  up  as  a  bedroom,  and  so  became  an 
office  fixture. 

By  the  time  his  voice  had  stopped  squeaking 
he  was  a  good  printer,  and  what  with  using  the 
front  office  for  a  study  at  night,  and  the  New 
York  papers  and  the  magazines  for  textbooks, 
he  had  acquired  a  good  working  education. 
Whereupon  he  fell  in  love  with  two  divinities 
at  once — the  blonde  one  working  in  the  Racket 
Store,  on  Main  Street,  and  the  other,  a  new 
linotype  that  we  installed  the  year  before  Mc- 
Kinley's  first  election.  His  heart  was  sadly 
torn  between  them.  He  never  went  to  bed 


42  In  Our  Town 

under  midnight  after  calling  on  either  of  them, 
and,  having  the  Celt's  natural  aptitude  to  get  at 
the  soul  of  either  women  or  intricate  mechan- 
ism, in  a  year  he  was  engaged  to  both;  but 
naturally  enough  a  brain  fever  overtook  him, 
and  he  lay  on  a  cot  at  the  Sisters'  Hospital  and 
jabbered  strange  things. 

Among  other  things  the  priest  who  sat  beside 
him  one  day  heard  Latin  verse;  whereat  the 
father  addressed  David  in  the  language  of  the 
Church  and  received  reply  in  kind.  And  they 
talked  solemnly  about  matters  theological  for 
five  minutes,  David's  voice  changing  to  the 
drone  of  the  liturgist's  and  his  face  flushing 
with  uncaged  joy.  In  an  hour  there  were  three 
priests  with  the  boy,  and  he  spoke  in  Latin  to 
them  without  faltering.  He  discussed  abstruse 
ecclesiastical  questions  and  claimed  incidentally 
to  be  an  Italian  priest  dead  a  score  of  years, 
and,  to  prove  his  claim,  described  Rome  and  the 
Vatican  as  it  was  before  Leo's  day.  Then  he 
fell  asleep  and  the  next  day  was  better  and 
knew  no  Latin,  but  insisted  on  reading  the  note 
under  his  pillow  which  his  girl  had  sent  him. 
After  that  he  wanted  to  know  how  New  York 


In  Our  Town  43 

stood  in  the  National  League  and  how  Hans 
Wagner's  batting  record  was,  and  proceeded  to 
get  well  in  short  order. 

David  resumed  his  place  in  the  office,  and 
when  we  put  in  the  perfecting  press  he  added 
another  string  to  his  bow.  The  press  and  the 
linotype  and  his  girl  were  his  life's  passions, 
and  his  position  as  short-stop  in  the  Maroons, 
and  as  snare-drummer  in  the  Second  Regiment 
band,  were  his  diversions.  He  wore  clothes 
well  and  became  president  of  the  Imperial 
Dancing  Club — chiefly  to  please  his  girl,  who 
desired  social  position.  A  boy  with  twelve  dol- 
lars a  week  In  a  country  town,  who  will  spend 
a  dollar  or  two  a  month  to  have  his  clothes 
pressed,  can  accomplish  any  social  heights  which 
rise  before  him,  and  there  is  no  barrier  in  our 
town  to  a  girl  merely  because  she  presides  at 
the  ribbon-counter;  which,  of  course,  is  as  it 
should  be. 

So  David  became  a  town  personage.  When 
the  linotype  operator  left,  we  gave  David  the 
place.  Now  he  courted  only  one  of  his  sweet- 
hearts by  night,  and  found  time  for  other 
things.  Also  we  gave  him  three  dollars  :i 


44  In  Our  Town 

week  more  to  spend,  and  the  Imperial  Club 
got  most  of  it — generally  through  the  medium 
of  the  blonde  in  the  Racket  Store,  who  was 
cultivating  a  taste  for  diamonds,  and  liked  to 
wear  flowers  at  the  more  formal  dances. 

Now,  unless  they  are  about  to  be  married,  a 
boy  of  twenty  may  not  call  on  a  girl  of  nine- 
teen in  a  respectable  family,  a  member  of  the 
Plymouth  Daughters,  and  a  graduate  of  the 
High  School,  oftener  than  four  nights  in  the 
week,  without  exciting  more  or  less  neighbourly 
comment;  but  David  and  the  girl  were  merely 
going  together — as  the  parlance  of  our  town 
has  it — and  though  they  were  engaged  they  had 
no  idea  of  getting  married  at  any  definite  time. 
David  thus  had  three  nights  in  the  seven  which 
might  be  called  open.  The  big  press  would  not 
receive  him  by  night,  and  he  spent  his  love  on 
his  linotype  by  day;  so  he  was  lonesome  and 
longed  for  the  society  of  his  kind.  The  bil- 
liard-hall did  not  tempt  him;  but  at  the  cigar- 
store  he  met  and  fell  under  the  spell  of  Henry 
Larmy — known  of  the  town  as  "  Old  Hen," 
though  he  was  not  two  score  years  gone — and 
the  two  began  chumming  together. 


In  Our  Town  45 

"  Old  Hen "  worked  in  a  tin-shop,  read 
Ruskin,  regarded  Debs  as  a  prophet,  received 
many  papers  devoted  to  socialism  and  the  New 
Thought,  and  believed  that  he  believed  in  no 
man,  no  God  and  no  devil.  Also  he  was  a 
woman-hater,  and  though  he  never  turned  his 
head  for  a  petticoat,  preached  free-love  and 
bought  many  books  which  promised  to  tell  him 
how  to  become  a  hypnotist.  At  various  times, 
Larmy's  category  of  beliefs  included  the  single- 
tax,  Buddhism,  spiritualism,  and  a  faith  in  the 
curative  properties  of  blue  glass.  David  and 
Henry  Larmy  would  sit  in  the  office  of  even- 
ings discussing  these  things  when  honest  people 
should  be  in  bed. 

Henry  never  could  tell  us  just  how  the  talk 
drifted  to  hypnotism  and  the  occult,  nor  when 
the  current  started  that  way.  But  one  of  the 
reporters  who  happened  to  be  driven  off  the 
street  by  the  rain  one  night  found  Henry  and 
David  in  the  office  with  a  home-made  planchette 
doing  queer  things.  They  made  it  tell  words 
in  the  middle  of  pages  of  newspapers  that 
neither  had  opened.  They  made  it  write 
answers  to  sums  that  neither  had  calculated, 


46  In  Our  Town 

and  they  made  it  give  the  names  of  Henry's 
relatives  dead  and  gone — also  those  that  were 
living,  whom  David,  who  was  operating  it,  did 
not  know.  The  thing  would  not  move  for  the 
man,  but  the  boy's  fingers  on  it  made  it  fly. 
Some  way  the  triangular  board  broke,  and  the 
reporter  and  Henry  were  pop-eyed  with  wonder 
to  see  David  hold  his  hands  above  the  pencil 
and  make  it  write,  dragging  a  splinter  of  board 
behind  it.  David  yawned  five  or  six  times  and 
lay  down  on  the  office  couch,  and  when  he  got 
up  a  moment  later  his  hands  were  fingering  the 
air,  his  lips  fluttering  like  the  wings  of  fledg- 
lings, and  he  seemed  to  be  trying  some  new  kind 
of  lingo.  He  did  not  look  about  him,  but  went 
straight  to  the  table,  gripped  the  air  above  the 
pencil  with  the  broken  board  upon  it,  and  the 
pencil  came  up  and  began  writing  something, 
evidently  in  verse.  David's  face  was  shiny  and 
smiling  the  while,  but  his  eyes  were  fixed, 
though  his  lips  moved  as  they  do  when  one 
writes  and  is  unused  to  it.  Larmy  stared  at 
the  boy  with  open  mouth,  clearly  afraid  of  the 
spectacle  that  was  before  him.  A  night  creak- 
ing of  the  building  made  him  jump,  and  he 


In  Our  Town  47 

moistened  his  lips  as  the  pencil  wrote  on.  When 
the  sheet  was  filled,  the  pencil  fell  and  David 
looked  about  him  with  a  smile  and  dropping 
his  head  on  the  desk  began  to  yawn.  He 
seemed  to  be  coming  out  of  a  deep  sleep,  and 
grinned  up  blinking:  "  Gee,  I  must  V  gone  to 
sleep  on  you  fellows.  I  was  up  late  last  night." 

Larmy  told  the  boy  what  had  happened,  and 
the  three  of  them  looked  at  the  paper,  but  could 
make  nothing  of  it.  David  shook  his  head. 

"  Not  on  your  life,"  he  laughed.  "  What  do 
you  fellers  take  me  for — a  phonograph  having 
the  D.  T.'s,  or  a  mimeograph  with  a  past?  Uh- 
huh!  Not  for  little  David!  Why — say,  that 
is  some  kind  of  Dutch!  " 

The  reporter  knew  enough  to  know  that  it 
was  Latin,  but  his  High  School  days  were  five 
years  behind  him,  and  he  could  not  translate  it. 
The  Latin  professor  at  the  college,  however, 
said  that  it  seemed  to  be  an  imitation  of  Ovid. 

4nd  the  next  time  the  reporter  saw  a  light  in 
the  office  window  he  broke  into  the  seance. 
When  the  boy  and  his  girl  were  not  holding 
down  the  sofa  at  her  father's  home,  or  when 
there  was  no  dance  at  the  Imperial  Club  hall, 


48  In  Our  Town 

nor  any  other  social  diversion,  David  and 
Larmy  and  the  reporter  would  meet  at  the 
office  and  dive  into  things  too  deep  for  Hora- 
tio's philosophy. 

Their  favourite  theme  was  the  immortality 
of  the  soul,  and  when  they  were  on  this  theme 
David  would  get  nervous,  pace  up  and  down 
the  office,  and  finally  throw  himself  on  the 
lounge  and  begin  to  yawn.  Whereupon  a  con- 
trol, or  state  of  mind,  or  personality  that  called 
itself  Fra  Guiseppi  would  rise  to  consciousness 
and  dominate  the  boy.  Larmy  and  the  reporter 
called  it  "  father,"  and  talked  to  it  with  con- 
siderable jocularity,  considering  that  the  father 
claimed  they  were  talking  to  a  ghost.  It  would 
do  odd  things  for  them;  go  into  rooms  where 
David  had  never  been:  describe  their  fur- 
nishings and  occupants  accurately;  read  the  num- 
bers on  watches  of  prominent  citizens,  which 
the  reporter  would  verify  the  next  day;  and  pre- 
tend to  bring  other  departed  spirits  into  the 
room  to  discuss  various  matters.  Larmy  had  a 
pleasant  social  chat  with  Karl  Marx,  and  had 
the  spirits  hunting  all  over  the  kingdom-come 
for  Tom  Paine  and  Murat.  But  the  messenger 


In  Our  Town  49 

either  could  not  find  them,  or  the  line  was  busy 
with  someone  else,  so  these  worthies  never 
appeared. 

Still,  this  must  be  said  of  the  "  father,91  that  it 
had  a  philosophy  of  life,  and  a  distinct  per- 
sonality far  deeper  and  more  charming  and  in 
some  way  sweeter  than  David's;  that  it  talked 
with  an  accent,  which  to  the  hearers  seemed 
Italian,  and  in  a  voice  that  certainly  could  not 
have  been  the  boy's  by  any  trick  of  ventril- 
oquism. One  night  in  their  talks  Larmy  said: 

"  '  Father/  you  say  you  believe  that  the  judg- 
ments of  God  are  just — how  do  you  account  for 
the  sufferings,  the  heartaches,  the  sorrows,  the 
misery  that  come  in  the  wake  of  those  judg- 
ments? Here  is  a  great  railway  accident  that 
strikes  down  twenty  people,  renders  some  crip- 
ples for  life,  kills  others.  Here  is  a  flood  that 
sweeps  away  the  property  of  good  men  and  bad 
men.  Is  that  just?  What  compensation  is  there 
for  it?" 

The  "  father  "  put  his  chin  in  one  hand  and 
remained  silent  for  a  time,  as  one  deep  in 
thought;  then  he  replied: 

"That    is — what    you    call — life.    That    is 


5°  In  Our  Town 

what  makes  life,  life;  what  makes  it  different 
from  the  existence  we  know  now.  All  your 
misfortunes,  your  hardships,  your  joys,  all 
your  miseries  and  failures  and  triumphs — these 
are  the  school  of  the  soul  which  you  call  life. 
It  is  a  preparation  for  the  hereafter." 

And  David  waking  knew  nothing  of  the 
thing  that  possessed  him  sleeping.  When  they 
told  him,  he  would  smoke  his  cigarette,  and 
make  reply  that  he  must  have  had  'em  pretty 
bad  this  time,  or  that  he  was  glad  he  wasn't  that 
"  buggy  "  when  he  was  awake. 

David's  talent  soon  became  known  in  the 
office.  We  used  to  call  it  his  spook,  but  only 
once  did  we  harness  it  to  practical  business  and 
that  was  when  old  Charley  Hedrick,  the  local 
boss,  was  picking  a  candidate  for  the  Legis- 
lature. The  reporter  and  Larmy  asked  the 
"  father  "  one  night  if  it  could  get  us  connected 
with  Mr.  Hedrick.  It  said  it  would  try;  it 
needed  help.  And  there  appeared  another  per- 
sonality with  which  they  were  more  or  less 
familiar,  called  the  Jew.  The  Jew  claimed  to 
be  a  literary  man,  and  said  it  would  act  as  re- 
ceiver while  the  father  acted  as  transmitter  on 


In  Our  Town  51 

Hedrick.  Then  they  got  this  one-sided  tele- 
phonic conversation  in  a  thick,  wheezy  voice 
that  was  astonishingly  like  Hedrick's : 

"  Harmony — hell,  yes ;  we're  always  getting 
the  harmony  and  the  Worthington  state  bank 
gets  the  offices."  Then  a  pause  ensued.  "  Well, 
let  'em  bolt.  I'm  getting  tired  of  giving  up  the 
whole  county  ticket  to  them  fellows  to  keep  'em 
from  bolting."  After  another  pause,  he  seemed 
to  answer  someone:  "  Oh,  Bill? — you  can't 
trust  him!  He's  played  both  sides  in  this  town 
for  ten  years.  What  I  want  isn't  a  man  to  sat- 
isfy them,  but  just  this  once  I  want  a  man  who 
won't  be  even  under  the  suspicion  of  satisfying 
them.  I  want  a  fellow  to  satisfy  me."  The 
other  side  of  the  telephone  must  have  spoken, 
for  this  came:  "Well,  then,  we'll  bust  their 
damn  bank!  Did  you  see  their  last  statement: 
cash  down  to  fifteen  per  cent,  and  no  dividends 
on  half  a  million  assets  for  a  year  and  a  half? 
Something's  rotten  there.  They're  a  lot  of 
*  toads  in  a  poisoned  tank,'  as  old  Browning  says. 
If  they  want  a  fight,  they  can  have  it."  After  the 
silence  he  replied:  "  I  tell  you  fellows  they  can't 
afford  a  fight.  And,  anyway,  there'll  never  be 


52  In  Our  Town 

peace  in  this  town  till  we  get  things  on  the  basis 
of  one  bank,  one  newspaper,  one  wife  and  one 
country,  and  the  way  to  do  that  is  to  get  out  in 
the  open  and  fight.  If  I've  got  as  much  sense 
as  a  rabbit  I  say  that  Ab  Handy  is  the  man, 
and  whether  I'm  right  or  wrong  I'm  going  to 
run  him."  He  seemed  to  retort  to  some  ob- 
jector: "Yes,  and  the  first  thing  you  know 
he'd  come  charging  up  to  the  Speaker's  desk 
with  a  maximum  freight-rate  bill,  or  a  stock- 
yards bill — and  where  would  I  be?  I  tell  you 
he  won't  stand  hitched.  He'll  swell  up  like  a 
pizened  pup,  and  you  couldn't  handle  him. 
Where'd  any  of  us  be,  if  the  Representative  from 
this  county  got  to  pawing  the  air  for  reform? 
I  know  Jake  as  though  I'd  been  through  him 
with  a  lantern."  There  must  have  been  a  dis- 
cussion of  some  kind  among  the  others,  for  a 
lengthy  interim  followed;  then  the  voice  con- 
tinued: "Elect  him? — of  course  we  can  elect 
him.  I  can  get  five  hundred  from  the  State  Com- 
mittee and  we  can  raise  that  much  down  here. 
This  is  a  Republican  year,  and  we  could  elect 
Judas  Iscariot  against  any  of  the  eleven  breth- 
ren this  year  on  the  Republican  ticket,  and  I  tell 


In  Our  Town  53 

you  it's  Ab.  You  fellows  can  do  as  you  please, 
but  I'm  going  to  run  Ab." 

Then,  being  full  of  political  curiosity  rather 
than  impelled  by  a  desire  for  psychological  re- 
search, the  reporter  slipped  out  and  waited  in  a 
stairway  opposite  the  Exchange  National  Bank 
building  until  the  light  in  Hedrick's  law  office 
was  extinguished.  Then  he  saw  old  Charley  and 
his  henchmen  come  out,  one  at  a  time,  look  cau- 
tiously up  and  down  the  street  and  go  forth  in 
different,  devious  ways.  The  story  in  our  paper 
the  next  day  of  the  candidacy  of  Ab  Handy 
threw  consternation  into  the  ranks  of  the  enemy. 
We  had  printed  the  conversation  as  it  had  oc- 
curred, after  which  five  men  publicly  contended 
that  one  of  their  number  was  a  traitor. 

The  summer  browned  the  pastures,  and  the 
coming  of  autumn  brought  trouble  for  David 
Lewis,  president  of  the  Imperial  Dancing  Club, 
short-stop  for  the  Maroons,  snare-drummer  in 
the  band,  and  operator  of  linotypes.  We  who 
are  at  the  period  of  life  where  love  is  a  harvest 
forget  the  days  of  the  harrow,  and  are  prone  to 
smile  at  the  season  of  the  seeding.  We  do  not 
know  that  the  heaviest  burden  God  puts  on  a 


54  In  Our  Town 

young  soul  is  a  burden  of  the  heart.  A  travel- 
ling silk-salesman,  with  a  haughty  manner  and  a 
two-hundred-dollar  job,  saw  the  blonde  in  the 
Racket  Store  and  began  calling  at  her  father's 
home  like  the  captain  of  an  army  with  banners. 
David,  being  only  an  armour-bearer  at  fifteen 
dollars  a  week,  found  heartbreak  in  it  all  for 
him.  A  girl  of  twenty  is  so  much  older  than  a 
boy  of  twenty-one  that  the  blonde  began  to  as- 
sume a  maternal  attitude  toward  the  boy,  and 
he  took  to  walking  afield  on  Sundays,  looking 
at  the  sky  in  agony  and  asking  his  little  "  now-I- 
lay-me  "  God,  what  life  was  given  to  him  for. 
He  fabricated  a  legend  that  she  was  selling  her- 
self for  gold,  and  when  the  haughty  manner  and 
the  blonde  sped  by  David's  window  behind  jing- 
ling sleigh-bells  that  winter,  David,  sitting  at  the 
machine,  got  back  proofs  from  the  front  office 
that  looked  like  war-maps  of  a  strange  coun- 
try. Moreover  he  let  his  matrices  go  uncleaned 
until  they  were  beardy  as  wheat  and  the  bill 
of  repairs  on  the  machine  had  begun  to  rise  like 
a  cat's  back. 

All  of  this  may  seem  funny  in  the  telling,  but 
to  see  the  little  Welshman's  heart  breaking  in 


In  Our  Town  55 

him  was  no  pleasant  matter.  The  girls  in  the 
office  pitied  the  boy,  and  hoped  the  silk-drum- 
mer would  break  her  heart.  The  town  and 
the  Imperial  Club,  whereof  David  was  much 
beloved,  took  sides  with  him,  and  knew  his 
sorrow  for  their  own.  As  for  the  blonde,  it 
was  only  nature  asserting  itself  in  her;  so  David 
got  back  his  little  chip  diamonds,  and  his  bangle 
bracelet,  and  his  copy  of  "  Riley's  Love  Songs," 
and  there  was  the  "  mist  and  the  blinding  rain  " 
for  him,  and  the  snow  of  winter  hardened  on 
the  sidewalks. 

To  console  himself,  the  boy  traded  for  a 
music-box,  which  he  set  going  with  a  long  brass 
lever.  Its  various  tunes  were  picked  in  holes 
on  circular  steel  sheets,  which  were  fed  into  the 
box  and  set  whirling  with  the  lever.  At  night 
when  Larmy  wasn't  enjoying  what  David 
called  a  spook-fest,  the  boy  would  sit  in  the 
office  by  the  hour  and  listen  to  his  music-box. 
He  must  have  played  "  Love's  Golden  Dream 
Is  Past "  a  hundred  lonesome  times  that  winter 
(it  had  been  their  favourite  waltz — his  and  the 
girl's — at  the  Imperial  Club),  and  it  was  a 
safe  guess  that  if  the  boys  in  the  office,  as  they 


56  In  Our  Town 

passed  the  box  at  noon,  would  give  the  lever  a 
yank,  from  the  abdomen  of  the  contrivance  the 
waltz  song  would  begin  deep  and  low  to  rumble 
and  swell  out  with  all  the  simulation  of  sorrow 
that  a  mechanical  soul  may  express. 

As  the  winter  deepened,  Larmy  and  the 
reporter  and  the  "  father  "  had  more  and  more 
converse.  The  "  father  "  explained  a  theory  of 
immortality  which  did  not  interest  the  reporter, 
but  which  Larmy  heard  eagerly.  It  said  that 
science  would  resolve  matter  into  mere  forms  of 
motion,  which  are  expressions  of  divine  will, 
and  that  the  only  place  where  this  divine  will 
exists  in  its  pure  state,  eluding  the  so-called 
material  state,  is  in  the  human  soul.  Further, 
the  "  father "  explained  that  this  soul,  or  di- 
vine will,  exists  without  the  brain,  independent 
of  brain  tissue,  as  may  be  proved  by  the  ac- 
cepted phenomena  of  hypnotism,  where  the 
soul  is  commanded  to  leave  the  body  and 
see  and  hear  and  feel  and  know  things  which 
the  mere  physical  organs  can  not  experience, 
owing  to  the  interposition  of  space.  The 
"  father  "  said  that  at  death  the  Divine  Will 
commands  the  ripened  seed  of  life  to  leave  the 


In  Our  Town  57 

body  and  assume  immortality,  just  as  that  Will 
commands  the  seeds  of  plants  and  the  sperm  of 
animals  to  assume  their  natural  functions.  The 
Thing  that  talked  through  David's  lips  said  that 
the  body  is  the  seed-pod  of  the  soul,  and  that 
souls  grow  little  or  much  as  they  are  planted 
and  environed  and  nurtured  by  life.  All  this  it 
said  in  many  nights,  while  Larmy  wondered 
and  the  reporter  scoffed  and  stuck  pins  in  David 
to  see  if  he  could  feel  them.  And  the  boy 
wakened  from  his  dreams  always  to  say: 
"  Gimme  a  cigarette !  "  and  to  reach  over  and 
pull  the  lever  of  his  music-box,  and  add:  "  Per- 
fessor,  give  us  a  tune !  Hen,  the  professor  says 
he  won't  play  unless  you  give  me  a  cigarette  for 
him." 

One  night,  after  a  long  wrangle  which  ended 
in  a  discourse  by  the  "  father,"  a  strange  thing 
happened.  Larmy  and  It  were  contending  as  to 
whether  It  was  merely  a  hypnotic  influence  on 
the  boy,  of  someone  living  whom  they  did  not 
know,  or  what  It  claimed  to  be,  a  disembodied 
spirit.  By  way  of  diversion,  the  reporter  had 
just  run  a  binder's  needle  under  one  of  the  boy's 
finger-nails  to  see  whether  he  would  flinch. 


5 8  in  Our  Town 

Then  the  Voice  that  was  corning  from  David's 
mouth  spoke  and  said:  "  I  will  show  you  some- 
thing to  prove  it;  "  and  the  entranced  boy  rose 
and  went  to  the  back  room,  while  the  two  others 
followed  him. 

He  turned  the  lever  that  flashed  the  light 
on  his  linotype,  and  set  the  little  motor  going. 
He  lifted  up  the  lid  of  the  metal-pot,  to  see  if 
the  fire  was  keeping  it  molten.  Then  the  boy  sat 
at  the  machine  with  his  hands  folded  in  his  lap, 
gazing  at  the  empty  copy-holder  out  of  dead 
eyes.  In  a  minute — perhaps  it  was  a  little  long- 
er— a  brass  matrix  slipped  from  the  magazine 
and  clicked  down  into  the  assembler;  in  a  second 
or  two  another  fell,  and  then,  very  slowly,  like 
the  ticks  of  a  great  clock,  the  brasses  slipped — 
slipped — slipped  into  their  places,  and  the  steel 
spaces  dropped  into  theirs.  A  line  was  formed, 
while  the  boy's  hands  lay  in  his  lap.  When  it 
was  a  full  line  he  grabbed  the  lever,  that  sent  the 
line  over  to  the  metal-pot  to  be  cast,  and  his 
hand  fell  back  in  his  kp,  while  the  dripping  of 
the  brasses  continued  and  the  blue  and  white 
keys  on  the  board  sank  and  rose,  although  no 
finger  touched  them. 


In  Our  Town  59 

Larmy  squinted  at  the  thing,  and  held  his 
long,  fuzzy,  unshaven  chin  in  his  hand.  When 
the  second  line  was  cast  the  reporter  broke  the 
silence  with:  "Well,  I'll  be  damned!"  And 
the  Voice  from  David's  mouth  replied:  "  Very 
likely."  And  the  clicking  of  the  brasses  grew 
quicker. 

Seven  lines  were  cast  and  then  the  boy  got  up 
and  went  back  to  the  couch  in  the  front  room, 
where  he  yawned  himself,  apparently,  through 
three  strata  of  consciousness,  into  his  normal 
self.  They  took  a  proof  of  what  had  been  cast, 
but  it  was  in  Latin  and  they  could  not  translate 
it.  David  himself  forgot  about  it  the  next 
day,  but  the  reporter,  being  impressed  and 
curious,  took  the  proof  to  the  teacher  of  Latin 
at  the  college,  who  translated  it  thus :  "  He  shall 
go  away  on  a  long  journey  across  the  ocean,  and 
he  shall  not  return,  yet  the  whole  town  shall  see 
him  again  and  know  him — and  he  shall  bring 
back  the  song  that  is  in  his  heart,  and  you  shall 
hear  it" 

The  next  week  the  "  Maine  "  was  blown  up, 
and  in  the  excitement  the  troubles  of  David 
were  forgotten  in  the  office.  Moreover,  as  he 


60  In  Our  Town 

had  to  work  overtime  he  put  his  soul  deeper 
into  the  machine,  and  his  nerves  took  on  some- 
thing of  the  steel  in  which  he  lived.  The  Asso- 
ciated Press  report  was  long  in  those  days,  and 
the  paper  was  filled  with  local  news  of  wars  and 
rumours  of  wars,  so  that  when  the  call  for  troops 
came  in  the  early  spring,  the  town  was  eager  for 
it,  and  David  could  not  wait  for  the  local  com- 
pany to  form,  but  went  to  Lawrence  and  en- 
listed with  the  Twentieth  Kansas.  He  was  our 
first  war-hero  for  thirty  years,  and  the  town 
was  proud  of  him.  Most  of  the  town  knew 
why  he  went,  and  there  was  reproach  for  the 
blonde  in  the  Racket  Store,  who  had  told  the 
girls  it  would  be  in  June  and  that  they  were 
going  East  for  a  wedding  trip. 

When  David  came  back  from  Lawrence  an 
enlisted  man,  with  a  week  in  which  to  prepare 
for  the  fray,  the  Imperial  Club  gave  him  a 
farewell  dance  of  great  pride,  in  that  one  end 
of  Imperial  Hall  was  decorated  for  the  occa- 
sion with  all  the  Turkish  rugs,  and  palms,  and 
ferns,  and  piano-lamps  with  red  shades,  and 
American  flags  draped  from  the  electric 
fixtures,  and  all  the  cut-glass  and  hand-painted 


In  Our  Town  61 

punch-bowls  that  the  girls  of  the  T.  T.  T.  Club 
could  beg  or  borrow;  and  red  lemonade  and 
raspberry  sherbet  flowed  like  water.  Whereat 
David  Lewis  was  so  pleased  that  he  grew  tear- 
ful when  he  came  into  the  hall  and  saw  the  splen- 
dour that  had  been  made  for  him.  But  his  soul, 
despite  his  gratitude  to  the  boys  and  girls  who 
gave  the  party,  was  filled  with  an  unutterable 
sadness;  and  he  sat  out  many  dances  under  the 
red  lamp-shades  with  the  various  girls  who  had 
been  playing  sister  to  him;  and  the  boys  to 
whom  the  girls  were  more  than  sisters  were 
not  jealous. 

As  for  the  blonde,  she  beamed  and  preened 
and  smiled  on  David,  but  her  name  was  not  on 
his  card,  and  as  the  silk-salesman  was  on  the 
road,  she  had  many  vacant  lines  on  her  pro- 
gramme, and  she  often  sat  alone  by  a  card-table 
shuffling  the  deck  that  lay  there.  The  boy's  eyes 
were  dead  when  they  looked  at  her  and  her  smile 
did  not  coax  him  to  her.  Once  when  the  others 
were  dancing  an  extra  David  sat  across  the 
room  from  her,  and  she  went  to  him  and  sat  by 
him,  and  said  under  the  music: 

"  I   thought   we   were   always   going   to   be 


62  In   Our  Town 

friends — David?1'  And  after  he  had  parried 
her  for  a  while,  he  rose  to  go  away,  and  she 
said:  "Won't  you  dance  just  once  with  me, 
Dave,  just  for  old  sake's  sake  before  you 
go?  "  And  he  put  down  his  name  for  the  next 
extra  and  thought  of  how  long  it  had  been 
since  the  last  June  dance.  Old  sake's  sake  with 
youth  may  mean  something  that  happened  only 
day  before  yesterday. 

The  boy  did  not  speak  to  his  partner  during 
the  next  dance  but  went  about  debating  some- 
thing in  his  mind;  and  when  the  number  was 
ended  he  tripped  over  to  the  leader  of  the 
orchestra,  whom  he  had  hired  for  dances  a 
score  of  times,  and  asked  for  "  Love's  Golden 
Dream  Is  Past "  as  the  next  "  extra."  It  was 
his  waltz  and  he  didn't  care  if  the  whole 
town  knew  it — they  would  dance  it  together. 
And  so  when  the  orchestra  began  he  started 
away,  a  very  heart-broken,  brown-eyed,  olive- 
skinned  little  Welshman,  who  barely  touched 
the  finger-tips  of  a  radiant,  overdeveloped 
blonde  with  roses  in  her  cheeks  and  moonlight 
in  her  hair.  She  would  have  come  closer  to  him 
but  he  danced  away  and  only  hunted  for  her 


In  Our  Town  63 

soul  with  his  brown  Celtic  eyes.  And  because 
David  had  asked  for  it  and  they  loved  the  boy, 
the  old  men  in  the  orchestra  played  the  waltz 
over  and  over  again,  and  at  the  end  the  dancers 
clapped  their  hands  for  an  encore,  and  when 
the  chorus  began  they  sang  it  dancing,  and  the 
boy  found  the  voice  which  cheered  the  "  Men 
of  Harlech,"  the  sweet,  cadent  voice  of  his  race, 
and  let  out  his  heart  in  the  words. 

When  he  led  her  to  a  seat,  the  blonde  had 
tears  on  her  eyelashes  as  she  choked  a  "  good- 
by,  Dave  "  to  him,  but  he  turned  away  without 
answering  her  and  went  to  find  his  next  partner. 
It  was  growing  late  and  the  crowd  soon  went 
down  the  long,  dark  stairway  leading  from  Im- 
perial Hall,  into  the  moonlight  and  down  the 
street,  singing  and  humming  and  whistling 
"  Love's  Golden  Dream,"  and  the  next  day  they 
and  the  town  and  the  band  came  down  to  the 
noon  train  to  see  the  conquering  hero  go. 

It  was  lonesome  in  the  office  after  David 
went,  and  his  music-box  in  the  corner  was  dumb, 
for  we  couldn't  find  the  brass  lever  for  it, 
though  the  printers  and  the  reporters  hunted  in 
his  trunk  and  in  every  place  they  could  think  of. 


64  In  Our  Town 

But  the  tonesomest  things  in  the  world  for  him 
were  the  machines.  The  big  press  grew  sulky 
and  kept  breaking  the  web,  and  his  linotype 
took  to  absorbing  castor-oil  as  if  it  were  a  kind 
of  hasheesh.  The  new  operator  could  run  the 
new  machine,  but  David's  seemed  to  resent 
familiarity.  It  was  six  months  before  we  got 
things  going  straight  after  he  left  us. 

He  wrote  us  soldier  letters  from  the  Pre- 
sidio, and  from  mid-ocean,  and  from  the  picket- 
line  in  front  of  Manila.  One  afternoon  the  mes- 
senger-boy came  in  snuffling  with  a  sheet  of  the 
Press-report.  David's  name  was  among  the 
killed.  Then  we  turned  the  column  rules  on  the 
first  page  and  got  out  the  paper  early  to  give 
the  town  the  news.  Henry  Larmy  brought  in  an 
obituary,  the  next  day,  which  needed  much 
editing,  and  we  printed  it  under  the  head  "  A 
Tribute  from  a  Friend,"  and  signed  Larmy's 
name  to  it. 

The  boy  had  no  kith  or  kin — which  is  most 
unusual  for  a  Welshman — and  so,  except  in 
our  office,  he  seemed  to  be  forgotten.  A  month 
went  by,  the  season  changed,  and  changed  again, 
and  a  year  was  gone,  when  the  Government 


In  Our  Town  65 

sent  word  to  Larmy — whom  the  boy  seemed 
to  have  named  for  his  next  friend — that 
David's  body  would  be  brought  back  for 
burial  if  his  friends  desired  it.  So  in  the 
fall  of  1900,  when  the  Presidential  campaign 
was  at  its  height,  the  conquering  hero  came 
home,  and  we  gave  him  a  military  funeral.  The 
body  came  to  us  on  Labor  Day,  and  in  our  office 
we  consecrated  the  day  to  David.  The  band 
and  the  militia  company  took  him  from  the  big 
stone  church  where  sometimes  he  had  gone  to 
Sunday-school  as  a  child,  and  a  long  procession 
of  townsfolk  wound  around  the  hill  to  the 
cemetery,  where  David  received  a  salute  of  guns, 
and  the  bugler  played  taps,  and  our  eyes  grew 
wet  and  our  hearts  were  touched.  Then  we 
covered  him  with  flowers,  whipped  up  the  horses 
and  came  back  to  the  world. 

That  night,  as  it  was  at  the  end  of  a  holiday, 
the  Republican  Committee  had  assigned  to  our 
town,  for  the  benefit  of  the  men  in  the  shops, 
one  of  the  picture-shows  that  Mark  Hanna, 
like  a  heathen  in  his  blindness,  had  sent  to 
Kansas,  thinking  our  State,  after  the  war, 
needed  a  spur  to  its  patriotism  in  the  election. 


66  In  Our  Town 

The  crowd  in  front  of  the  post-office  was  a 
hundred  feet  wide  and  two  hundred  feet  long, 
looking  at  the  pictures  from  the  kinetoscope — 
pictures  of  men  going  to  work  in  mills  and  fac- 
tories; pictures  of  the  troops  unloading  on  the 
coast  of  Cuba;  pictures  of  the  big  warships 
sailing  by;  pictures  of  Dewey's  flagship  coming 
up  the  Hudson  to  its  glory;  pictures  of  the 
Spanish  ships  lying  crushed  in  Manila  harbour. 

Larmy  and  the  reporter  were  sitting  kick- 
ing their  heels  on  the  stone  steps  of  the  post- 
office  opposite  the  screen  on  which  the  pictures 
were  flickering.  Some  they  saw  and  others  they 
did  not  notice,  for  their  talk  was  of  David  and 
of  the  strange  things  he  had  shown  to  them. 

"  How  did  you  ever  fix  it  up  in  your  mind?  " 
asked  Larmy. 

"  I  didn't  fix  it  up.  He  was  too  many  for 
me,"  was  the  reporter's  answer. 

"  The  little  rooster  couldn't  have  faked  it 
up  ?  "  questioned  Larmy. 

"  No — but  he  might  have  hypnotised  us — or 
something." 

*  Yes — but  still,  he  might  have  been  hyp- 
notised by  something  himself,"  suggested 


In  Our  Town  67 

Larmy,  and  then  added:  "That  thing  he  did 
with  the  linotype — say,  wasn't  that  about  the 
limit?  And  yet  nothing  has  come  of  that 
prophecy.  That's  the  trouble.  IVe  seen  dozens 
of  those  things,  and  they  always  just  come  up 
to  the  edge  of  proving  themselves,  but  always 
jump  back.  There  is  always " 

"My  God,  Larmy,  look — look!"  cried  the 
reporter. 

And  the  two  men  looked  at  the  screen  before 
them,  just  as  the  backward  sway  of  the  crowd 
had  ceased  and  horror  was  finding  a  gasping 
voice  upon  the  lips  of  the  women;  for  there, 
walking  as  naturally  as  life,  out  of  the  back- 
ground of  the  picture,  came  David  Lewis  with 
his  dark  sleeves  rolled  up,  his  peaked  army  hat 
on  the  back  of  his  head,  a  bucket  in  his  hand, 
and  as  he  stopped  and  grinned  at  the  crowd — 
between  the  lightning-flashes  of  the  kinetoscope 
— they  could  see  him  wave  his  free  hand.  He 
stood  there  while  a  laugh  covered  his  features, 
and  he  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket  and  drew  out 
a  key-ring,  which  he  waved,  holding  it  by  some 
long,  stemlike  instrument.  Then  he  snapped 
back  into  nothing. 


68  In  Our  Town 

And  the  operator  of  the  machine,  being  in  a 
hurry  to  catch  the  ten-thirty  train,  went  on  with 
his  picture-show  and  gave  us  President  Mc- 
Kinley  and  Mark  Hanna  sitting  on  the  front 
steps  of  the  home  in  Canton,  then  followed 
the  photograph  of  the  party  around  the  big 
table  signing  the  treaty  of  peace.  As  the  crowd 
loosened  and  dissolved,  Larmy  and  the  reporter 
stood  silently  waiting.  Then,  when  they  could 
get  away  together,  the  reporter  said: 

"  Come,  let's  go  over  to  the  shop  and  think 
about  this  thing." 

When  they  opened  the  office  door,  the  rank 
odour  of  the  machinery  came  to  them  with  sick- 
ening force.  They  left  the  front  door  open  and 
raised  the  windows.  The  reporter  began  using 
a  chisel  on  the  top  of  a  little  box  with  a  Gov- 
ernment frank  on  it,  that  had  been  placed  upon 
the  music-box  in  the  corner. 

14  We  may  as  well  see  what  David  sent 
home,"  he  grunted,  as  he  jerked  at  the  stub- 
born nails,  "  anyway,  I've  got  a  theory." 

Larmy  was  smoking  hard.  "  Yes,"  he  replied 
after  a  time;  "  we  might  as  well  open  it  now  as 
any  time.  The  letter  said  all  his  things  would 


In  Our  Town  69 

be  found  there.  I  guess  he  didn't  have  a  great 
deal.  Poor  little  devil,  there  was  no  one  much 
to  get  things  for  but  you  fellows  and  maybe  me, 
if  he  thought  of  us." 

By  this  time  the  box  was  opened,  and  the 
reporter  was  scooping  things  out  upon  the  floor. 
There  was  an  army  uniform,  that  had  some- 
thing clinky  in  the  pockets,  and  wrapped  in  a 
magenta  silk  handkerchief  was  a  carved  piece 
of  ivory.  In  a  camera  plate-box  was  a  rose, 
faded  and  crumbly,  a  chip-diamond  ring,  a 
bangle  bracelet,  a  woman's  glove  and  a  photo- 
graph. These  Larmy  looked  at  as  he  smoked. 
They  meant  nothing  to  him,  but  the  reporter 
dived  into  the  clothes  for  the  clinky  things.  He 
came  up  with  a  bunch  of  keys,  and  on  ic  was 
the  long  brass  lever  which  unlocked  the  music 
in  the  box. 

"  Here,"  he  said  as  he  jingled  the  keys,  "  is 
the  last  link  in  our  chain."  And  he  rose  and 
went  over  to  the  box,  uncovered  it,  and  jabbed 
in  the  lever  with  a  nervous  hand.  There  was  a 
rolling  and  clinking  inside.  Then,  slowly,  a 
harmony  rose,  and  the  tinkling  that  came  from 
the  box  resolved  itself  into  a  melody  that  filled 


7°  In  Our  Town 

the  room.  It  was  strong  and  clear  and  power- 
ful, and  seemed  to  have  a  certain  passion  in  it 
that  may  have  been  struck  like  flint  fire  from 
the  time  and  the  place  and  the  spirit  of  the  oc- 
casion. The  two  men  stared  dumbly  as  they 
listened.  The  sound  rose  stronger  and  stronger; 
over  and  over  again  the  song  repeated  itself; 
then  very  gently  its  strength  began  to  fail;  and 
finally  it  sank  into  a  ghostly  tinkle  that  still 
carried  the  melody  till  it  faded  into  silence. 

'l  That,"  said  the  reporter,  "  is  the  song  that 
was  in  his  heart — *  Love's  Golden  Dream/ 
I'm  satisfied." 

1  The  last  link,"  shuddered  Larmy.  "That 
which  seemed  corporeal  has  melted  *  as  a  breath 
into  the  wind.' ' 

The  reporter  shovelled  the  debris  into  the 
box,  pushed  it  under  a  desk,  and  the  two  men 
hurried  to  close  the  office.  As  they  stood  on  the 
threshold  a  moment,  while  the  reporter  clicked 
the  key  in  the  lock,  a  paper  rustled  and  they 
heard  a  mouse  scamper  across  the  floor  inside 
the  empty  room. 

"  Let's  go  home,"  shivered  Larmy.  They 
started  north,  which  was  the  short  way  home, 


In  Our  Town  71 

but  Larmy  took  hold  of  his  companion's  arm 
and  said:  "  No,  let's  go  this  way:  there's  an 
electric  light  here  on  the  corner,  and  it's  dark 
down  there." 

And  so  they  turned  into  the  white,  sputtering 
glare  and  walked  on  without  words. 


V 
The  Coming  of  the  Leisure  Class 

WE  all  are  workers  in  our  town,  as  peo- 
ple are  in  every  small  town.  It  is 
always  proper  to  ask  what  a  man 
does  for  a  living  with  us,  for  none  of  us  has 
money  enough  to  live  without  work,  and  until 
the  advent  of  Beverly  Amidon,  our  leisure  class 
consisted  of  Red  Martin,  the  gambler,  the  only 
man  in  town  with  nothing  to  do  in  the  middle  of 
the  day;  and  the  black  boys  who  loafed  on  the 
south  side  of  the  bank  building  through  the  long 
afternoons  until  it  was  time  to  deliver  the 
clothes  which  their  wives  and  mothers  had 
washed.  Everyone  else  in  town  works,  and,  ex- 
cepting an  occasional  picnic,  there  is  no  social 
activity  among  the  men  until  after  sundown. 
But  five  years  ago  Beverly  Amidon  came  to 
town,  and  brought  with  him  a  large  leisure  and 
a  taste  for  society  which  made  him  easily  the 
"  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form  "  not 
only  in  our  little  community,  but  all  over  this  part 

72 


And   brought  with  him   a  large   leisure  and    a  taste  for 
society 


In  Our  Town  73 

of  the  State.  Beverly  and  his  mother,  who  had 
come  to  make  their  home  with  her  sister,  in  one 
of  the  big  houses  on  the  hill,  had  money.  How 
much,  we  had  no  idea.  In  a  small  town  when 
one  has  "  money  "  no  one  knows  just  how  much 
or  how  little,  but  it  must  be  over  fifteen  thou- 
sand dollars,  otherwise  one  is  merely  "  well 
fixed." 

But  Beverly  was  a  blessing  to  our  office.  We 
never  could  have  filled  the  society  column  Satur- 
day without  him,  for  he  was  a  continuous  social 
performance.  He  was  the  first  man  in  town  who 
dared  to  wear  a  flannel  tennis  suit  on  the  streets, 
and  he  was  a  whole  year  ahead  of  the  other  boys 
with  his  Panama  hat.  It  was  one  of  those  broad- 
brimmed  Panamas,  full  of  heart-interest,  that 
made  him  look  like  a  romantic  barytone,  and 
when  under  that  gala  fagade  he  came  tripping 
into  the  office  in  his  white  duck  clothes,  with  a 
wide  Windsor  tie,  Miss  Larrabee,  the  society 
editor,  who  was  the  only  one  of  us  with  whom  he 
ever  had  any  business,  would  pull  the  string  that 
unhooked  the  latch  of  the  gate  to  her  section  of 
the  room  and  say,  without  looking  up :  "  Come 
into  the  garden,  Maud."  To  which  he  made 


74  In  Our  Town 

invariable   reply:  "Oh,   Miss  Larrabee,   don't 
be  so  sarcastic !  I  have  a  little  item  for  you.1* 

The  little  item  was  always  an  account  of  one 
of  his  social  triumphs.  And  there  was  a  long 
list  of  them  to  his  credit.  He  introduced  ping- 
pong;  he  gave  us  our  first  "  pit  party  ";  he  held 
the  first  barn  dance  given  in  the  county;  his 
was  our  first  "tacky  party  ";  and  he  gave  the 
first  progressive  buggy  ride  the  young  people 
had  ever  enjoyed,  and  seven  girls  afterward 
confessed  that  on  the  evening  of  that  affair  he 
hadn't  been  in  the  buggy  with  them  five  min- 
utes before  he  began  driving  with  one  hand — 
and  his  right  hand  at  that.  Still,  when  the  crowd 
assembled  for  supper  at  Flat  Rock,  the  girls 
didn't  hold  his  left  handiwork  against  him,  and 
they  admitted  that  he  was  just  killing  when  he 
put  on  one  of  their  hats  and  gave  an  imitation 
of  a  girl  from  Bethany  College  who  had  been 
visiting  in  town  the  week  before.  Beverly  was 
always  the  life  of  the  company.  He  could  make 
three  kinds  of  salad  dressing,  two  kinds  of  lob- 
ster Newburgh  and  four  Welsh  rarebits,  and  was 
often  the  sole  guest  of  honour  at  the  afternoon 
meetings  of  the  T.  T.  T.  girls,  before  whom  he 


In  Our  Town  75 

was  always  willing  to  show  his  prowess.  Some- 
times he  gave  chafing-dish  parties  whereat  he 
served  ginger  ale  and  was  real  devilish. 

He  used  to  ride  around  the  country  bare- 
headed with  two  or  three  girls  when  honest  men 
were  at  work,  and  he  acquired  a  fine  leather-col- 
oured tan.  He  tried  organising  a  polo  club,  but 
the  ponies  from  the  delivery  waggons  that  were 
available  after  six  o'clock  did  not  take  training 
well,  and  he  gave  up  polo.  In  making  horse- 
back riding  a  social  diversion  he  taught  a  lot  of 
fine  old  family  buggy  horses  a  number  of  minc- 
ing steps,  so  that  thereafter  they  were  impos- 
sible in  the  family  phaeton.  He  thereby  became 
unpopular  with  a  number  of  the  heads  of  fam- 
ilies, and  he  had  to  introduce  bridge  whist  in  the 
old  married  set  to  regain  their  favour.  This  cost 
him  the  goodwill  of  the  preachers,  and  he  gave 
a  Japanese  garden  party  for  the  Epworth 
League  to  restore  himself  in  the  church  where  he 
was  accustomed  to  pass  the  plate  on  Sundays. 
Miss  Larrabee  used  to  call  him  the  first  aid  to 
the  ennuied.  But  the  Young  Prince,  who  chased 
runaways  teams  and  wrote  personal  items,  never 
referred  to  him  except  as  "  Queen  of  the  Hand- 


76  In   Our  Town 

holders."  For  fun  we  once  printed  Beverly 
Amidon's  name  among  those  present  at  a 
Mothers'  League  meeting,  and  it  was  almost  as 
much  of  a  hit  in  the  town  as  the  time  we  put  the 
words,  "  light  refreshments  were  served  and  the 
evening  was  spent  in  cards  and  dancing,"  at  the 
close  of  an  account  of  a  social  meeting  of  the 
Ministerial  Alliance. 

The  next  time  Beverly  brought  in  his  little 
item  he  stopped  long  enough  to  tell  us  that  he 
thought  that  the  people  who  laughed  at  our  ob- 
vious mistake  in  the  list  of  guests  of  the  Mothers' 
League  were  rather  coarse.  One  word  brought 
on  two,  and  as  it  was  late  in  the  afternoon,  and 
the  paper  was  out,  we  bade  Beverly  sit  down  and 
tell  us  the  story  of  his  life,  and  his  real  name; 
for  Miss  Larrabee  had  declared  a  dozen  times 
that  Beverly  Amidon  sounded  so  much  like  a 
stage  name  that  she  was  willing  to  bet  that  his 
real  name  was  Jabez  Skaggs. 

Beverly's  greatest  joy  was  in  talking  about 
his  social  conquests  in  Tiffin,  Ohio ;  therefore  he 
soon  was  telling  us  that  there  was  so  much  cul- 
ture in  Tiffin,  such  a  jolly  lot  of  girls,  so  many 
pleasant  homes,  and  a  most  extraordinary  at- 


In  Our  Town  77 

mosphere  of  refinement.  He  rattled  along,  tell- 
ing us  what  great  sport  they  used  to  have  run- 
ning down  to  Cleveland  for  theatre-parties,  and 
how  easy  it  was  to  'phone  to  Toledo  and  get 
the  nicest  crowd  of  boys  one  could  wish  to 
come  over  to  the  parties,  and  how  Tiffin  was 
famous  all  over  that  part  of  Ohio  for  its  ex- 
clusive families  and  its  week-end  house-parties. 

The  Young  Prince  sat  by  listening  for  a  time 
and  then  got  up  and  leaned  over  the  railing 
around  Miss  Larrabee's  desk.  Beverly  was  con- 
fiding to  us  how  he  got  up  the  sweetest  living 
pictures  you  ever  saw  and  took  them  down  to 
Cleveland,  where  they  made  all  kinds  of  money 
for  the  King's  Daughters.  He  told  what  gor- 
geous costumes  the  girls  wore  and  what  stun- 
ning backgrounds  he  rigged  up.  The  Young 
Prince  winked  at  Miss  Larrabee  as  he  straight- 
ened up  and  started  for  the  door.  Then  he  let 
fly :  "  Were  you  Psyche  at  the  Pool  in  that  show, 
or  a  Mellin's  Food  Baby?  " 

But  Beverly  deigned  no  reply  and  a  little  later 
in  the  conversation  remarked  that  the  young  men 
in  this  town  were  very  bad  form.  He  thought 
that  he  had  seen  some  who  were  certainly  not 


7  8  In  Our  Town 

gentlemen.  He  really  didn't  see  how  the  young 
ladies  could  endure  to  have  such  persons  in  their 
set.  He  confided  to  Miss  Larrabee  that  at  a  re- 
cent lawn-party  he  had  come  upon  a  young  man, 
who  should  be  nameless,  with  his  arm  about  a 
young  woman's  waist. 

"  And,  Miss  Larrabee,"  continued  Beverly  in 
his  solemnest  tones,  "  A  young  man  who  will 
put  his  arm  around  a  girl  will  go  further — yes, 
Miss  Larabee — much  further.  He  will  kiss 
her !  "  Whereat  he  nodded  his  head  and  shook 
it  at  the  awful  thought. 

Miss  Larrabee  drew  in  a  shocked  breath  and 
gasped : 

"Do  you  really  think  so,  Mr.  Amidon?  I 
couldn't  imagine  such  a  thing !  " 

He  had  a  most  bedizened  college  fraternity 
pin,  which  he  was  forever  lending  to  the  girls. 
During  his  first  year  in  town,  Miss  Larrabee 
told  us,  at  least  a  dozen  girls  had  worn  the  thing. 
Wherefore  she  used  to  call  it  the  Amidon  Loan 
Exhibit. 

He  introduced  golf  into  our  town,  and  was 
able  to  find  six  men  to  join  his  fifteen  young 
ladies  in  the  ancient  sport.  Two  preachers,  a 


In  Our  Town  79 

young  dentist  and  three  college  professors  were 
the  only  male  creatures  who  dared  walk  across 
our  town  in  plaid  stockings  and  knickerbockers, 
and  certainly  it  hurt  their  standing  at  the  banks, 
for  the  town  frowned  on  golf,  and  confined  its 
sport  to  baseball  in  the  summer,  football  in  the 
autumn,  and  checkers  in  the  winter. 

That  was  a  year  ago.  In  the  autumn  some- 
thing happened  to  Beverly,  and  he  had  to  go  to 
work.  There  was  nothing  in  our  little  town  for 
him,  so  he  went  to  Kansas  City.  He  did  not  seem 
to  "  make  it  "  socially  there,  for  he  wrote  to  the 
girls  that  Kansas  City  was  cold  and  distant  and 
that  everything  was  ruled  by  money.  He  ex- 
plained that  there  were  some  nice  people,  but 
they  did  not  belong  to  the  fast  set.  He  was  pos- 
itively shocked,  he  wrote,  at  what  he  heard  of 
the  doings  at  the  Country  Club — so  different 
from  the  way  things  went  in  Tiffin,  Ohio. 

For  a  long  time  we  did  not  hear  his  name  men- 
tioned in  the  office.  Finally  there  came  a  letter 
addressed  to  Miss  Larrabee.  In  it  Beverly  said 
that  he  had  found  his  affinity.  "  She  is  not  rich," 
he  admitted,  "  but,"  he  added,  "  she  belongs  to 
an  old,  aristocratic,  Southern  family,  through  re- 


8o  In  Our  Town 

duced  circumstances  living  in  retirement;  very 
exclusive,  very  haughty.  I  have  counted  it  a 
privilege  to  be  constantly  associated  with  people 
of  such  rare  distinction.  Her  mother  is  a  grand 
dame  of  the  old  school  who  has  opened  her  home 
to  a  few  choice  paid  guests  who  feel,  as  I  do, 
that  it  is  far  more  refreshing  socially  to  partake 
of  the  gracious  hospitality  of  her  secluded  home 
than  to  live  in  the  noisy,  vulgar  hotels  of  the 
city.  It  was  in  this  relation  at  her  mother's  home 
that  I  met  the  woman  who  is  to  join  her  lot  with 
mine."  Thereafter  followed  the  date  and  place 
of  the  wedding,  a  description  of  the  bride's  dress, 
an  account  of  her  lineage  back  to  the  "  Revolu- 
tionary Georgia  Governor  of  that  name,"  and 
fifty  cents  in  stamps  for  extra  papers  containing 
an  account  of  the  wedding. 

In  time  we  hope  to  teach  our  young  men  to 
roll  down  their  shirt-sleeves  in  the  summer,  our 
girls  to  wear  their  hats,  our  horses  to  quit  pranc- 
ing in  the  shafts  of  the  family  buggy.  In  time 
bridge  whist  will  wear  itself  out,  in  time  our 
social  life  will  resume  its  old  estate,  and  the 
owners  of  the  five  dress-suits  in  town  will  return 
to  their  former  distinction.  In  time  caste  lines 


In   Our  Town  81 

set  by  the  advent  of  the  leisure  class  will  be  ob- 
literated, and  it  will  be  no  longer  bad  form  for 
the  dry-goods  clerk  to  dance  with  the  grocery 
clerk's  wife  at  the  Charity  Ball.  But,  come  what 
may,  we  shall  always  know  that  there  was  a  time 
in  the  social  history  of  our  town  when  we  danced 
the  two-step  as  they  dance  it  in  Tiffin,  Ohio,  and 
wore  knee-breeches  and  plaid  stockings,  and  quit 
work  at  four  o'clock.  Those  were  great  days — 
"  the  glory  that  was  Greece,  the  grandeur  that 
was  Rome." 


VI 
The  Bolton  Girl's  "  Position  " 

WHEN  she  said  she  would  like  to 
"  accept  a  position "  with  our 
paper,  it  was  all  over  between  us. 
After  that  we  knew  that  she  was  at  least  highly 
improbable  if  not  entirely  impossible.  But  then 
we  might  have  expected  as  much  from  a  girl 
who  called  herself  Maybelle.  There  is,  how- 
ever, this  much  to  be  said  in  Maybelle's  favour: 
she  was  persistent.  She  did  not  let  go  till  it 
thundered !  We  could  have  stood  it  well  enough 
if  she  had  limited  her  campaign  for  a  job  on 
the  paper  to  an  occasional  call  at  the  office. 
But  she  had  a  fiendish  instinct  which  told  her 
who  were  the  friends  we  liked  most  to  oblige: 
the  banker,  for  instance,  who  carried  our  over- 
drafts, the  leading  advertiser,  the  chairman  of 
the  printing  committee  of  the  town  council — 
and  she  found  ways  to  make  them  ask  if  we 
couldn't  do  something  for  Miss  Bolton.  She 
could  teach  school;  indeed,  she  had  a  place  in 

82 


In  Our  Town  83 

the  Academy.  But  she  loathed  school-teach- 
ing. She  had  always  felt  that,  if  she  could  once 
get  a  start,  she  could  make  a  name  for  her- 
self. 

She  had  written  something  that  she  called 
"A  Critique  on  Hamlet,"  which  she  submitted 
to  us,  and  was  deeply  pained  when  we  told  her 
that  we  didn't  care  for  editorial  matter;  that 
what  our  paper  needed  was  the  names  of  the 
people  in  our  own  country  town  and  county, 
printed  as  many  times  a  day  or  a  week  or  a 
month  as  they  could  be  put  into  type.  We  tried 
to  tell  her  that  more  important  to  us  than  the 
influence  of  the  Celtic  element  on  our  national 
life  and  literature  was  the  fact  that  John  Jones 
of  Lebo — that  is  to  say,  red  John,  as  distin- 
guished from  black  John — or  Jones  the  tinner, 
or  Jones  of  the  Possum  Holler  settlement 
was  in  town  with  a  load  of  hay.  "  Other 
papers,"  we  explained  carefully,  while  she  looked 
as  sympathetic  and  intelligent  as  a  collie,  "  other 
papers  might  be  interested  in  the  radio-activity 
of  uranium  X;  they  might  care  to  print  articles 
on  the  psychological  phenomena  of  mobs  " — 
to  which  she  snapped  eager  agreement  with  her 


84  In  Our  Town 

eyes — "  others,  with  entire  propriety,  might  b( 
interested  in  inorganic  evolution " — and  she 
cheeped  "  yes,  yes  "  with  feverish  intensity-^ 
"  but  in  our  little  local  paper  we  cared  only  foi 
the  person  who  could  tell  our  readers  with  tha 
most  delicacy  and  precision  how  many  spoons, 
Mrs.  Worthington  had  to  borrow  for  her  party, 
who  had  the  largest  number  of  finger-bowls  in 
town,  what  Mrs.  Conklin  paid  for  the  broilers 
she  served  at  her  party  last  February,  and  the 
name  of  the  country  woman  who  raised  them, 
and  why  it  was  that  all  the  women  failed  to 
make  Jennie's  recipe  for  sunshine  cake  work- 
when  they  tried  it."  Such  are  the  things  that 
interest  our  people,  and  he,  she  or  it  who  can 
turn  in  two  or  three  colums  a  day  of  items  set- 
ting forth  these  things  in  a  good-natured  way, 
so  that  the  persons  mentioned  will  only  grin 
and  wonder  who  told  it,  is  good  for  ten  dollars 
of  our  money  every  Saturday  night. 

Maybelle    thought    it    was    such    interest.!])!? 
work,   and  her  eyes    floated    in   tears   of   h-;p 
piness  at  the  thought  of  such  joy.  If  she  could 
only  have  a  chance!  It  would  be  just  lovely — 
simply  grand,  and  she  knew  she  could  do  it! 


Sometimes  he  thought  it  was  a  report  of  a  fire  and  at  other 
times  it  seemed  like  a  dress-goods  catalogue 


In   Our  Town  85 

Something  in  her  innermost  soul  thrilled  with 
a  tintinabulation  that  made  her  quiver  with 
anticipation.  Whereupon  she  went  out  and 
came  back  in  three  days  with  five  sheets  of 
foolscap  on  which  she  had  written  an  article  be- 
ginning: "When  Memory  draws  aside  the 
curtains  of  her  magic  chamber,  revealing  the 
pictures  meditation  paints,  and  we  see  through 
the  windows  of  our  dreams  the  sweet  vale  of 
yesterday,  lying  outside  and  beyond;  when 
stern  Ambition,  with  relentless  hand,  turns  us 
away  from  all  this  to  ride  in  the  sombre  chariot 
of  Duty — then  it  is  that  entrancing  Pleasure 
beckons  us  back  to  sit  by  Memory's  fire  and  sip 
our  tea  with  Maiden  meditation."  What  it  was 
all  about  no  one  ever  found  out ;  but  the  Young 
Prince  at  the  local  desk  who  read  it  clear 
through  said  that  sometimes  he  thought  that  it 
was  a  report  of  a  fire  and  at  other  times  it  seemed 
like  a  dress-goods  catalogue.  It  would  have 
made  four  columns.  As  he  put  the  roll  back  in 
the  drawer  the  Young  Prince  rose  and  paced 
grandly  out.  At  the  front  door  he  stopped  and 
said :  "  You'll  never  make  anything  out  of  her — 
she's  a  handholder!  When  a  girl  begins  to  get 


86  In  Our  Town 

corns  on  her  hands,  I  notice  she  has  mush  on 
the  brain  1  " 

But  Maybelle  returned,  and  we  went  all  over 
the  same  ground  again.  We  explained  that  what 
we  wanted  was  short  items — two  or  three  lines 
each — little  references  to  home  doings;  some- 
thing telling  who  has  company,  who  is  sick,  who 
is  putting  shingles  on  the  barn  or  an  "  L  "  on 
the  house.  And  she  said  "  Oh,  yes!"  so  pas- 
sionately that  it  seemed  as  though  she  would 
bark  or  put  her  front  feet  on  the  table.  One 
felt  like  taking  her  jaws  in  his  hands  and  pull- 
ing her  ears. 

The  next  time  she  came  in  she  said  that  if  we 
would  just  try  her — give  her  something  to  do — 
she  was  sure  she  could  show  us  how  well  she 
could  do  it.  On  a  venture,  and  partly  to  get  rid 
of  her,  we  sent  her  to  the  district  convention  of 
the  Epworth  League  to  write  up  the  opening 
meeting.  About  noon  of  the  next  day  she 
brought  in  three  sermons,  and  said  that  she 
didn't  get  the  list  of  officers  nor  the  names  of 
the  choir  because  they  were  all  people  who  lived 
here  and  everyone  knew  them.  Then  we  ex- 
plained in  short,  simple  sentences  that  the  ser- 


In  Our  Town  87 

mons  were  of  no  value,  and  that  the  names 
were  what  we  desired.  She  dropped  her  eyes 
and  said  meekly  "  Oh!  "  and  told  us  how  sorry 
she  was.  Also  she  said  that  if  it  wasn't  for 
a  meeting  of  the  T.  T.  T.  girls  that  afternoon 
she  would  go  back  and  get  the  names.  When  she 
went  out,  the  Young  Prince,  sitting  by  the  win- 
dow with  his  pencil  behind  his  ear  and  his  feet 
on  the  table,  said:  "I  bet  she  can  make  the 
grandest  fudge !  "  "  And  such  lovely  angel 
food,"  put  in  Miss  Larrabee,  who  was  busy 
writing  up  the  Epworth  League  convention. 

Miss  Bolton's  name  was  always  among  the 
lists  we  printed  of  the  guests  at  the  Entre  Nous 
Card  Club,  the  Imperial  Dancing  Club,  the 
"  Giddy  Young  Things "  Club,  the  Art  Club 
and  the  Shakespeare  Club.  But  when  she  came 
to  the  office  she  was  full  of  anxiety  at  the  frivol- 
ity of  society.  She  said  that  she  so  longed  for 
intellectual  companionship  that  she  felt  some- 
times as  if  she  must  fly  to  a  place  where  she  could 
find  a  soul  that  would  feel  in  unison  with  the 
infinite  that  thrilled  her  being.  Far  be  it  from 
her  to  wish  to  coin  the  pulsations  of  her  soul, 
but  papa  and  mamma  did  need  her  help  so. 


88  In  Our  Town 

She  accented  papa  and  mamma  on  the  last 
syllable  and  leaned  forward  and  looked  upward 
like  a  shirtwaist  Madonna.  But  writing  locals 
someway  didn't  appeal  to  her.  She  wondered 
if  we  could  use  a  serial  story.  And  then  she 
went  on :  "  Oh,  I  have  some  of  the  sweetest 
things  in  my  head !  I  know  I  could  write  them. 
They  just  tingle  through  my  blood  like  wine. 
I  know  I  could  write  them — such  sublime 
things — but  when  I  sit  down  to  put  them  on 
paper  something  always  comes  up  that  prevents 
my  going  on  with  them.  There  are  dozens 
whirling  through  my  brain  begging  to  be  writ- 
ten. There  is  one  about  the  earl  who  has  im- 
prisoned the  young  princess  in  a  dungeon,  and 
her  lover,  a  knight  of  the  cross,  comes  home 
from  a  crusade  and  is  put  in  the  cell  next  to  her. 
A  bird  that  she  has  been  feeding  through  her 
prison  window  takes  a  lock  of  her  golden  hair 
to  the  window  where  her  lover  is  looking  out 
across  the  beautiful  world,  not  knowing  that  she, 
too,  has  fallen  into  the  earl's  clutches.  And,  oh, 
yes!  there  is  another  about  Cornelia  who  lived 
in  a  moated  tower,  and  all  the  dukes  and  lords 
and  kings  in  the  land  had  laid  suit  to  her  hand, 


In  Our  Town  89 

and  she  could  find  none  who  came  up  to  her 
highest  ideal,  so  she  set  them  a  task — and,  oh, 
a  lot  more  about  what  they  did;  I  haven't 
thought  that  out — but  anyway  she  married  the 
red  duke  Wolfang  who  spurned  her  task  and 
took  her  by  night  with  his  retainers  away  from 
the  tower,  saying  her  love  was  his  Holy  Grail 
and  to  get  her  was  the  object  of  his  pilgrimage. 
Oh,  it's  just  grand." 

No,  we  don't  use  serials  and  when  we  do 
we  buy  them  in  stereotyped  plates  by  the 
pound.  This  made  Miss  Bolton  droop,  with 
another  disappointed  "  Oh."  The  grain  of  the 
world  seems  so  coarse  when  one  looks  at  it 
closely. 

We  did  not  see  Miss  Bolton  at  the  office  for 
a  long  time  after  the  duke  abducted  the  lady 
in  the  moated  grange,  but  we  received  a  poem 
signed  M.  B.  "  To  Dan  Cupid,"  and  another 
on  "  My  Heart  of  Fire."  Also  there  came  an 
anonymous  communication  in  strangely  familiar 
fat  vertical  handwriting  to  the  effect  that  "  some 
people  in  this  town  think  that  if  a  young  lady  has 
a  gentleman  friend  call  on  her  more  than  twice 
a  week  it  is  their  business  to  assume  a  courtship. 


90  In  Our  Town 

They  should  know  that  there  are  souls  on  this 
earth  whose  tendrils  reach  into  the  infinite  be- 
yond the  gross  materiality  of  this  mundane 
sphere  to  a  destiny  beyond  the  stars."  At  the 
bottom  of  the  page  were  the  words :  "  Please 
publish  and  oblige  a  subscriber." 

The  next  that  we  heard  of  Miss  Bolton  was 
that  she  was  running  pink  and  blue  baby-ribbon 
through  her  white  things,  and  was  expecting  a 
linen  shower  from  the  T.  T.  T.  girls,  a  silver 
shower  from  the  "  Giddy  Young  Things,"  a 
handkerchief  shower  from  the  Entre  Nous  girls, 
and  a  kitchen  shower  from  the  Imperial  Club. 
Miss  Larrabee,  the  society  editor,  began  to  hate 
Miss  Bolton  with  the  white-hot  hate  which  all 
society  editors  turn  on  all  brides.  Miss  Larrabee 
was  authority  for  the  statement  that  Maybelle 
had  used  five  hundred  yards  of  baby-ribbon — 
pink  and  blue  and  white  and  yellow — in  her 
trousseau,  and  that  she  was  bestowing  the 
same  passionate  fervour  on  her  hemstitching  and 
tucking  that  she  had  wasted  on  literature;  that 
she  was  helping  papa  and  mamma  by  shoulder- 
ing the  biggest  wedding  on  them  since  the  Tom- 
linsons  went  into  bankruptcy  after  their  firework 


In  Our  Town  91 

ceremonial.  Miss  Larrabee  said  that  Papa 
Bolton's  livery-stable  was  burning  up  so  fast  that 
she  wanted  to  call  out  the  fire  department,  and 
that  Mamma  Bolton  made  her  think  of  the 
patent-medicine  testimonials  we  printed  from 
"  poor  tired  women." 

The  day  of  the  wedding  the  blow  came.  A 
very  starched-up  little  boy  with  strawberry 
juice  frescoed  around  his  mouth  brought  in  a 
note  from  Maybelle  and  a  tightly-rolled  manu- 
script tied  with  blue  baby-ribbon.  In  the  note 
she  said  that  she  thought  it  would  be  so  romantic 
to  "  write  up  her  own  wedding— recalling  the 
dear,  dead  days  when  she  was  a  neophyte  in 
letters."  We  handed  the  manuscript  to  Miss 
Larrabee,  from  whom,  as  she  read,  came  snorts : 
"  *  Drawing-room  !  '  Huh !  *  Music-room.' 
Heavens  to  Betsy!  *  Peculiar  style  of  beauty! ' 
Oh,  joy !  '  Looked  like  a  wood-nymph  in  the 
morn.'  Wouldn't  that  saturate  you !  '  The 
Apollo-like  beauty  of  the  groom.'  "  Miss  Larra- 
bee groaned  as  she  rose,  and  putting  her  raincoat 
on  the  floor  by  her  chair  she  exclaimed:  "  Do 
you  people  know  what  I  am  going  to  do  ?  I  have 
got  to  lie  right  down  here  and  have  a  fit !  " 


VII 
"By  the  Rod  of  His   Wrath" 

SATURDAY  afternoons,  when  the  town 
is  full,  and  farmers  are  coming  in  to  the 
office  to  pay  their  subscriptions  for  the 
Weekly,  it  is  our  habit,  after  the  paper  is  out, 
to  sit  in  the  office  and  look  over  Main  Street, 
where  perhaps  five  hundred  people  are  milling, 
and  consider  with  one  another  the  nature  of 
our  particular  little  can  of  angle-worms  and 
its  relation  to  the  great  forces  that  move 
the  world.  The  town  often  seems  to  us  to 
be  dismembered  from  the  earth,  and  to  be  a 
chunk  of  humanity  drifting  through  space  by  it- 
self, like  a  vagrant  star,  forgotten  of  the  law 
that  governs  the  universe.  Go  where  our  people 
will,  they  find  change;  but  when  they  come 
home,  they  look  out  of  the  hack  as  they  ride 
through  town,  seeing  the  old  familiar  buildings 
and  bill-boards  and  street-signs,  and  say  with 
surprise,  as  Mathew  Boris  said  after  a  busy 
and  eventful  day  in  Kansas  City,  where  he  had 

Q2 


In  Our  Town  93 

been  marketing  his  steers :  "  Well,  the  old  town 
seems  to  keep  right  on,  just  the  same." 

The  old  men  in  town  seem  always  to  have 
been  old,  and  though  the  middle-aged  do  some- 
times step  across  the  old-age  line,  the  young  men 
remain  perennially  young,  and  when  they  grow 
fat  or  dry  up,  and  their  hair  thins  and  whitens, 
they  are  still  called  by  their  diminutive  names, 
and  to  most  of  us  they  are  known  as  sons  of  the 
old  men.  Here  a  new  house  goes  up,  and  there 
a  new  store  is  built,  but  they  rise  slowly,  and 
everyone  in  town  has  time  to  go  through  them 
and  over  them  and  criticise  the  architectural 
taste  of  the  builders,  so  that  by  the  time  a  build- 
ing is  finished  it  seems  to  have  grown  into  the 
original  consciousness  of  the  people,  and  to  be 
a  part  of  their  earliest  memories.  We  send  our 
children  to  Sunday-school,  and  we  go  to  church 
and  learn  how  God's  rewards  or  punishments 
fell  upon  the  men  of  old,  as  they  were  faith- 
ful or  recreant;  but  we  don't  seem  to  be  like 
the  men  of  old,  for  we  are  neither  very  good 
nor  very  bad — hardly  worth  God's  while  to 
sort  us  over  for  any  uncommon  lot.  Only  once, 
in  the  case  of  John  Markley,  did  the  Lord 


94  In   Our  Town 

reach  into  our  town  and  show  His  righteous 
judgment.  And  that  judgment  was  shown  so 
clearly  through  the  hearts  of  our  people  that 
very  likely  John  Markley  does  not  consider  it 
the  judgment  of  God  at  all,  but  the  prejudice  of 
the  neighbours. 

When  we  have  been  talking  over  the  case  of 
John  Markley  in  the  office  we  have  generally 
ended  by  wondering  whether  God — or  what- 
ever one  cares  to  call  the  force  that  operates  the 
moral  laws,  as  well  as  those  that  in  our  ig- 
norance we  set  apart  as  the  physical  laws  of  the 
world — whether  God  moves  by  cataclysm  and 
accidents,  or  whether  He  moves  with  blessing 
or  chastisement,  through  human  nature  as  it  is, 
in  the  ordinary  business  of  the  lives  of  men. 
But  we  have  never  settled  that  in  our  office  any 
more  than  they  have  in  the  great  schools,  and  as 
John  Markley,  game  to  the  end,  has  never  said 
what  he  thought  of  the  town's  treatment  of  him, 
it  will  never  be  known  which  side  of  our  contro- 
versy is  right. 

Years  ago,  perhaps  as  long  ago  as  the 
drought  of  seventy-four,  men  began  calling  him 
"  Honest  John  Markley."  He  was  the  fairest 


In  Our  Town  95 

man  in  town,  and  he  made  money  by  it,  for  when 
he  opened  his  little  bank  Centennial  year,  which 
was  the  year  of  the  big  wheat  crop,  farmers 
stood  in  line  half  an  hour  at  a  time,  at  the  door 
of  his  bank,  waiting  to  give  him  their  money. 
He  was  a  plain,  uncollared,  short-whiskered 
man,  brown-haired  and  grey-eyed,  whose  wife 
always  made  his  shirts  and,  being  a  famous 
cook  in  town,  kept  him  round  and  chubby.  He 
referred  to  her  as  "  Ma,"  and  she  called  him 
"  Pa  Markley "  so  insistently  that  when  we 
elected  him  State  Senator,  after  he  made  his 
bank  a  National  bank,  in  1880,  the  town  and 
county  couldn't  get  used  to  calling  him  Senator 
Markley,  so  "  Pa  Markley  "  it  was  until  after 
his  Senatorial  fame  had  been  forgotten.  Their 
children  had  grown  up  and  left  home  before 
the  boom  of  the  eighties  came — one  girl  went 
to  California  and  the  boy  to  South  America; 
— and  when  John  Markley  began  to  write  his 
wealth  in  six  figures — which  is  almost  beyond 
the  dreams  of  avarice  in  a  town  like  ours — he 
and  his  wife  were  lonely  and  knew  little  what  to 
do  with  their  income. 

They  bought  new  furniture  for  the  parlour, 


96  In  Our  Town 

and  the  Ladies'  Missionary  Society  of  the  First 
Methodist  Church,  the  only  souls  that  saw  it 
with  the  linen  jackets  off,  say  it  was  lovely  to 
behold;  they  bought  everything  the  fruit-tree 
man  had  in  his  catalogue,  and  their  five  acres  on 
Exchange  Street  were  pimpled  over  with  shrubs 
that  never  bloomed  and  with  trees  that  never 
bore  fruit.  He  passed  the  hat  in  church — being 
a  brother-in-law  to  the  organisation,  as  he  ex- 
plained; sang  "Tramp,  Tramp,  Tramp,  the 
Boys  Are  Marching  "  at  Grand  Army  entertain- 
ments, and  always  as  an  encore  dragged  "  Ma  " 
out  to  sing  with  him  "  Dear,  Dear,  What  Can 
the  Matter  Be."  She  was  a  skinny,  sharp-eyed, 
shy  little  woman  in  her  late  fifties  when  the 
trouble  came.  She  rose  at  every  annual  meeting 
of  the  church  to  give  a  hundred  dollars  but  her 
voice  never  lasted  until  she  got  through  an- 
nouncing her  donation,  and  she  sat  down  de- 
murely, blushing  and  looking  down  her  nose  as 
though  she  had  disgraced  the  family.  She  had 
lost  a  brother  in  the  war,  and  never  came  further 
out  of  mourning  than  purple  flowers  in  her  bon- 
net. She  bought  John  Markley's  clothes,  so  that 
his  Sunday  finery  contained  nothing  giddier 


In   Our  Town  97 

than  a  grey  made-up  tie,  that  she  pinned  around 
the  collars  which  her  own  hands  had  ironed. 

Slowly  as  their  fortune  piled  up,  and  people 
said  they  had  a  million,  his  brown  beard  griz- 
zled a  little,  and  his  brow  crept  up  and  up  and 
his  girth  stretched  out  to  forty-four.  But  his 
hands  did  not  whiten  or  soften,  and  though  he 
was  "  Honest  John,"  and  every  quarter-section 
of  land  that  he  bought  doubled  in  value  by  some 
magic  that  he  only  seemed  to  know,  he  kept  the 
habits  of  his  youth,  rose  early,  washed  at  the 
kitchen  basin,  and  was  the  first  man  at  his  office 
in  the  morning.  At  night,  after  a  hard  day's 
work  he  smoked  a  cob-pipe  in  the  basement, 
where  he  could  spit  into  the  furnace  and  watch 
the  fire  until  nine  o'clock,  when  he  put  out  the 
cat  and  bedded  down  the  fire,  while  "  Ma  "  set 
the  buckwheat  cakes.  They  never  had  a  servant 
in  their  house. 

We  used  to  see  John  Markley  pass  the  office 
window  a  dozen  times  a  day,  a  hale,  vigorous 
man,  whose  heels  clicked  hard  on  the  sidewalk 
as  he  came  hurrying  along — head  back  and 
shoulders  rolling.  He  was  a  powerful,  mascu- 
line, indomitable  creature,  who  looked  out  of 


98  In  Our  Town 

defiant,  cold,  unblinking  eyes  as  though  he  were 
just  about  to  tell  the  whole  world  to  go  to  hell ! 
The  town  was  proud  of  him.  He  was  our 
"  prominent  citizen/*  and  when  he  was  elected 
president  of  the  district  bankers'  association, 
and  his  name  appeared  in  the  papers  as  a  possi- 
ble candidate  for  United  States  Senator  or  Min- 
ister to  Mexico  or  Secretary  of  the  Interior,  we 
were  glad  that  "  Honest  John  Markley  "  was 
our  fellow-townsman. 

And  then  came  the  crash.  Man  is  a  curious 
creature,  and,  even  if  he  is  nine  parts  good,  the 
old  Adam  in  him  must  burn  out  one  way  or  an- 
other in  his  youth,  or  there  comes  a  danger 
period  at  the  height  of  his  middle  life  when  his 
submerged  tenth  that  has  been  smouldering  for 
years  flares  up  and  destroys  him.  Wherefore 
the  problem  which  we  have  never  been  able  to 
solve,  though  we  have  talked  it  over  in  the 
office  a  dozen  times :  whether  John  Markley  had 
begun  to  feel,  before  he  met  the  Hobart  woman, 
that  he  wasn't  getting  enough  out  of  life  for  the 
money  he  had  invested  in  it;  or  whether  she 
put  the  notion  in  his  head. 

It  is  scarcely  correct  to  speak  of  his  having 


In   Our  Town  99 

met  her,  for  she  grew  up  in  the  town,  and  had 
been  working  for  the  Markley  Mortgage  and 
Investment  Company  for  half-a-dozen  years  be- 
fore he  began  to  notice  her.  From  a  brassy  street- 
gadding  child  of  twelve,  whose  mother  crowded 
her  into  grown-up  society  before  she  left  the 
high  school,  and  let  her  spell  her  name  Ysabelle, 
she  had  grown  into  womanhood  like  a  rank 
weed;  had  married  at  nineteen,  was  divorced 
at  twenty-one,  and  having  tried  music  teaching 
and  failed,  china  painting  and  failed,  she  learned 
stenography  by  sheer  force  of  her  own  will, 
with  no  instruction  save  that  in  her  book,  and 
opened  an  office  for  such  work  as  she  could  get, 
while  aiming  for  the  best  job  in  town — the  posi- 
tion of  cashier  and  stenographer  for  the  Mark- 
ley  Mortgage  Company.  It  took  her  three 
years  to  get  in  and  another  year  to  make  herself 
invaluable.  She  was  big  and  strong,  did  the 
work  of  two  men  for  the  pay  of  one,  and  for 
five  years  John  Markley,  who  saw  that  she  had 
plenty  of  work  to  do,  did  not  seem  to  know  that 
she  was  on  earth.  But  one  day  "  Alphabetical  " 
Morrison,  who  was  in  our  office  picking  up  his 
bundle  of  exchanges,  looked  rather  idly  out  of 


ioo  In   Our  Town 

the  window,  and  suddenly  rested  his  roving 
eyes  upon  John  Markley  and  Mrs.  Hobart, 
standing  and  talking  in  front  of  the  post  office. 
The  man  at  the  desk  near  Morrison  hap- 
pened to  be  looking  out  at  that  moment, 
and  he,  too,  saw  what  Morrison  saw — which 
was  nothing  at  all,  except  a  man  standing 
beside  a  woman.  Probably  the  pair  had  met 
in  exactly  the  same  place  at  exactly  the  same 
time,  and  had  exchanged  an  idle  word  daily 
for  five  years,  and  no  one  had  noticed  it,  but 
that  day  Morrison  unconsciously  put  his  hand 
to  his  chin  and  scratched  his  jaw,  and  his  eyes 
and  the  man's  at  the  desk  beside  him  met  in  a 
surprised  interrogation,  and  Morrison's  mouth 
and  nose  twitched,  and  the  other  man  said,  as 
he  turned  his  face  into  his  work,  '"  Well, 
wouldn't  that  get  you !  " 

The  conversation  went  no  further.  Neither 
could  have  said  what  he  saw.  But  there  is 
something  in  every  human  creature — a  survival 
of  our  jungle  days,  which  lets  our  eyes  see  more 
than  our  consciousness  records  in  language. 
And  these  men,  who  saw  Markley  and  the 
woman,  could  not  have  defined  the  canine  im- 


In  Our  Town  101 

pression  which  he  gave  them.  Yet  it  was  there. 
The  volcano  was  beginning  to  smoke. 

It  was  a  month  later  before  the  town  saw  the 
flames.  During  that  time  John  Markley  had 
been  walking  to  and  from  his  midday  dinner 
with  Isabel  Hobart,  had  been  helping  her  on 
and  off  with  her  wraps  in  the  office,  and  had 
been  all  but  kicking  up  the  dirt  behind  him  and 
barking  around  her,  as  the  clerks  there  told  us, 
without  causing  comment.  An  honest  man  al- 
ways has  such  a  long  start  when  he  runs  away 
from  himself  that  no  one  misses  him  until  he  is 
beyond  extradition.  Matters  went  along  thus 
for  nearly  a  year  before  the  woman  in  the  cot- 
tage on  Exchange  Street  knew  how  they  stood. 
And  that  speaks  well  of  our  town;  for  we  are 
not  a  mean  town,  and  if  anyone  ever  had  our 
sympathy  it  was  Mrs.  Markley,  as  she  went 
about  her  quiet  ways,  giving  her  missionary 
teas,  looking  after  the  poor  of  her  church,  mak- 
ing her  famous  doughnuts  for  the  socials,  doing 
her  part  at  the  Relief  Corps  chicken-pie  sup- 
pers, digging  her  club  paper  out  of  the  encyclo- 
paedia, and  making  over  her  black  silk  the  third 
time  for  every  day.  If  John  Markley  was  cross 


In  Our  Town 

with  her  in  that  time — and  the  neighbours  say 
that  he  was;  if  he  sat  for  hours  in  the  house 
without  saying  a  word,  and  grumbled  and  flew 
into  a  rage  at  the  least  ruffling  of  the  domestic 
waters — his  wife  kept  her  grief  to  herself,  and 
even  when  she  left  town  to  visit  her  daughter  in 
California  no  one  knew  what  she  knew. 

A  month  passed,  two  months  passed,  and 
John  Markley's  name  had  become  a  byword 
and  a  hissing.  Three  months  passed,  a  year 
went  by,  and  still  the  wife  did  not  return. 
And  then  one  day  Ab  Handy,  who  sometimes 
prepared  John  Markley's  abstracts,  came  into 
our  office  and  whispered  to  the  man  at  the  desk 
that  there  was  a  little  paper  filed  in  the  court 
which,  under  the  circumstances,  Mr.  Markley 
would  rather  we  would  say  as  little  about  as  is 
consistent  with  our  policy  in  such  cases.  Handy 
didn't  say  what  it  was,  and  backed  out  bowing 
and  eating  dirt,  and  we  sent  a  boy  hot-foot  to  the 
court-house  to  find  out  what  had  been  filed.  The 
boy  came  back  with  a  copy  of  a  petition  for  di- 
vorce that  had  been  entered  by  John  Markley, 
alleging  desertion.  John  Markley  did  not  face 
the  town  when  he  brought  his  suit,  but  left  for 


In  Our  Town  103 

Chicago  on  the  afternoon  train,  and  was  gone 
nearly  a  month.  The  broken  little  woman  did 
not  come  back  to  contest  the  case,  and  the 
divorce  was  granted. 

The  day  before  his  marriage  to  Isabel  Ho- 
bart,  John  Markley  shaved  off  his  grizzled 
brown  beard,  and  showed  the  town  a  face  so 
strong  and  cunning  and  brutal  that  men  were 
shocked;  they  said  that  she  wished  to  make  him 
appear  young,  and  the  shave  did  drop  ten  years 
from  his  countenance;  but  it  uncovered  his  soul 
so  shamelessly  that  it  seemed  immodest  to  look 
at  his  face.  Upon  the  return  from  the  wed- 
ding trip,  the  employees  of  the  Markley  Mort- 
gage Company,  at  John  Markley's  suggestion, 
gave  a  reception  for  the  bride  and  groom,  and 
the  Lord  laid  the  first  visible  stripe  on  John 
Markley  while  he  stood  with  his  bride  for  three 
hours,  waiting  for  the  thousand  invited  guests 
who  never  came.  "  Alphabetical "  Morrison, 
who  owed  John  Markley  money,  and  had  to 
go,  told  us  in  the  office  the  next  day  that  John 
Markley  in  evening  clothes,  with  his  great 
paunch  swathed  in  a  white  silk  vest,  smirking 
like  a  gorged  jackal,  showing  his  fellow-towns- 


104  In  Our  Town 

men  for  the  first  time  his  coarse,  yellow  teeth 
and  his  thin,  cruel  lips,  looked  like  some  horri- 
ble cartoon  of  his  former  self.  Colonel  Morri- 
son did  not  describe  the  bride,  but  she  passed 
our  office  that  day,  going  the  rounds  of  the  dry- 
goods  stores,  giggling  with  the  men  clerks — a 
picture  of  sin  that  made  men  wet  their  lips. 
She  was  big,  oversexed,  and  feline;  rattling 
in  silks,  with  an  aura  of  sensuousness  around 
her  which  seemed  to  glow  like  a  coal,  without 
a  flicker  of  kindness  or  shame  or  sweetness, 
and  which  all  the  town  knew  instinctively  must 
clinker  into  something  black  and  ngly  as  the 
years  went  by. 

So  the  threshold  of  the  cottage  on  Exchange 
Street  was  not  darkened  by  our  people.  And 
when  the  big  house  went  up — a  palace  for  a 
country  town,  though  it  only  cost  John  Mark- 
ley  $25,000 — he,  who  had  been  so  reticent 
about  his  affairs  in  other  years,  tried  to  talk  to 
his  old  friends  of  the  house,  telling  them  ex- 
pansively that  he  was  putting  it  up  so  that  the 
town  would  have  something  in  the  way  of  a 
house  for  public  gatherings;  but  he  aroused  no 
responsive  enthusiasm,  and  long  before  the  big 


In  Our  Town  105 

opening  reception  his  fervour  had  been  quenched. 
Though  we  are  a  curious  people,  and  though 
we  all  were  anxious  to  know  how  the  inside 
of  the  new  house  looked,  we  did  not  go  to  the 
reception;  only  the  socially  impossible,  and 
the  travelling  men's  wives  at  the  Metropole, 
whom  Mrs.  Markley  had  met  when  she  was 
boarding  during  the  week  they  moved,  gathered 
to  hear  the  orchestra  from  Kansas  City,  to  eat 
the  Topeka  caterer's  food,  and  to  fall  down  on 
the  newly-waxed  floors  of  the  Markley  man- 
sion. But  our  professional  instinct  at  the  office 
told  us  that  the  town  was  eager  for  news  of  that 
house,  and  we  took  three  columns  to  write  up 
the  reception.  Our  description  of  the  place  began 
with  the  swimming-pool  in  the  cellar  and  ended 
with  the  ballroom  in  the  third  story. 

It  took  John  Markley  a  long  time  to  realise 
that  the  town  was  done  with  him,  for  there  was 
no  uprising,  no  demonstration,  just  a  gradual 
loosening  of  his  hold  upon  the  community.  In 
other  years  his  neighbours  had  urged  him  and 
expected  him  to  serve  on  the  school-board,  of 
which  he  had  been  chairman  for  a  dozen  years, 
but  the  spring  that  the  big  house  was  opened 


io6  In  Our  Town 

Mrs.  Julia  Worthington  was  elected  in  his  place. 
At  the  June  meeting  of  the  Methodist  Confer- 
ence a  new  director  was  chosen  to  fill  John 
Markley's  place  on  the  college  board,  and 
when  he  cancelled  his  annual  subscription  no 
one  came  to  ask  him  to  renew  it.  In  the  fall 
his  party  selected  a  new  ward  committeeman, 
and  though  Markley  had  been  treasurer  of 
the  committee  for  a  dozen  years,  his  succes- 
sor was  named  from  the  Worthington  bank, 
and  they  had  the  grace  not  to  come  to 
Markley  with  the  subscription-paper  asking  for 
money.  It  took  some  time  for  the  sense  of  the 
situation  to  penetrate  John  Markley's  thick 
skin;  whereupon  the  fight  began  in  earnest,  and 
men  around  town  said  that  John  Markley  had 
knocked  the  lid  off  his  barrel.  He  doubled  his 
donation  to  the  county  campaign  fund;  he 
crowded  himself  at  the  head  of  every  subscrip- 
tion-paper; and  frequently  he  brought  us  com- 
munications to  print,  offering  to  give  as  much 
money  himself  for  the  library,  or  the  Provident 
Association,  or  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  as  the  rest  of 
the  town  would  subscribe  combined.  He  mended 
church  roofs  under  which  he  never  had  satj 


In  Our  Town  107 

he  bought  church  bells  whose  calls  he  never 
heeded;  and  paid  the  greater  part  of  the  pipe- 
organ  debts  in  two  stone  churches.  Colonel 
Morrison  remarked  in  the  office  one  day  that 
John  Markley  was  raising  the  price  of  popular 
esteem  so  high  that  none  but  the  rich  could 
afford  it.  "  But,"  chuckled  the  Colonel,  "  I  no- 
tice old  John  hasn't  got  a  corner  on  it  yet,  and 
he  doesn't  seem  to  have  all  he  needs  for  his  own 
use."  The  wrench  that  had  torn  open  his  treas- 
ure-chest, had  also  loosened  John  Markley's 
hard  face,  and  he  had  begun  to  smile.  He  be- 
came as  affable  as  a  man  may  who  has  lived  for 
fifty  years  silent  and  self-contained.  He  beamed 
upon  his  old  friends,  and  once  or  twice  a  week 
he  went  the  rounds  of  the  stores  making  small 
purchases,  to  let  the  clerks  bask  in  his  sunlight. 

If  a  new  preacher  came  to  town  the  Mark- 
leys  went  to  his  church,  and  Mrs.  Markley  tried 
to  be  the  first  woman  to  call  on  his  wife. 

All  the  noted  campaign  speakers  assigned  to 
our  town  were  invited  to  be  the  Markleys' 
guests,  and  Mrs.  Markley  sent  her  husband,  red 
necktied,  high-hatted  and  tailor-made,  to  the 
train  to  meet  the  distinguished  guest.  If  the 


In  Our  Town 

man  was  as  much  as  a  United  States  Senator, 
Markley  hired  the  band,  and  in  an  open  hack 
rode  in  solemn  state  with  his  prize  through  the 
town  behind  the  tinkling  cymbals,  and  then,  with 
much  punctility,  took  the  statesman  up  and  down 
Main  Street  afoot,  into  all  the  stores  and  offices, 
introducing  him  to  the  common  people.  At  such 
times  John  Markley  was  the  soul  of  cordiality; 
he  seemed  hungry  for  a  kind  look  and  a  pleasant 
word  with  his  old  friends.  About  this  time  his 
defiant  eyes  began  to  lose  their  boring  points, 
and  to  wander  and  hunt  for  something  they  had 
lost.  When  we  had  a  State  convention  of  the 
dominant  party,  the  Markleys  saw  to  it  that  the 
Governor  and  all  the  important  people  attend- 
ing, with  their  wives,  stopped  in  the  big  house. 
The  Markleys  gave  receptions  to  them,  which 
the  men  in  our  town  dared  not  ignore,  but  sent 
their  wives  away  visiting  and  went  alone.  This 
familiarity  with  politicians  probably  gave  the 
Markleys  the  idea  that  they  might  help  their 
status  in  the  community  if  John  Markley 
ran  for  Governor.  He  announced  his  candi- 
dacy, and  the  Kansas  City  papers,  which  did 
not  appreciate  the  local  situation,  spoke  well 


In  Our  Town  109 

of  him;  but  his  boom  died  in  the  first 
month,  when  some  of  his  old  friends  called 
at  the  back  room  of  the  bank  to  tell  him  that 
the  Democrats  would  air  his  family  affairs  if 
he  made  another  move.  He  looked  up  pitiably 
into  Ab  Handy's  face  when  the  men  were  done 
talking  and  said:  "Don't  you  suppose  they'll 
ever  quit?  Ain't  they  no  statute  of  limitation?  " 
And  then  he  arose  and  stood  by  his  desk  with 
one  arm  akimbo  and  his  other  hand  at  his  tem- 
ple as  he  sighed:  "  Oh  hell,  Ab — what's  the 
use?  Tell  'em  I'm  out  of  it!  " 

Mrs.  Markley  seems  to  have  shut  him  out  of 
the  G.  A.  R.,  thinking  maybe  that  the  old  boys 
and  their  wives  were  not  of  her  social  level,  or 
perhaps  she  had  some  idea  of  playing  even  with 
them,  because  their  wives  had  not  recognised 
her;  but  she  shut  away  much  of  her  husband's 
social  comfort  when  she  barred  his  comrades, 
and  they  in  turn  grew  harder  toward  him  than 
they  were  at  first.  As  the  Markleys  entered  their 
second  year,  Mrs.  Markley  alone  in  the  big 
house,  with  only  the  new  people  from  the  hotel 
to  eat  her  dinners,  and  with  only  the  beer-drink- 
ing crowd  from  the  West  Side  to  dance  in  the 


i  io  In  Our  Town 

attic  ballroom,  had  much  time  to  think,  and  she 
bethought  her  of  the  lecturers  who  were  upon 
the  college  lecture  course,  whereupon  John 
Markley  had  to  carve  for  authors  and  explorers, 
and  an  occasional  Senator  or  Congressman,  who, 
after  a  hard  evening's  work  on  the  platform, 
paid  for  his  dinner  and  lodging  by  sitting  up  on 
a  gilded  high-backed  and  uncomfortable  chair  in 
the  stately  reception-room  of  the  Markley  home, 
talking  John  Markley  into  a  snore,  before  Isabel 
let  them  go  to  bed.  Isabel  sent  the  accounts  of 
these  affairs  to  the  office  for  us  to  print,  with  the 
lists  of  invited  guests,  who  never  accepted.  And 
the  town  grinned. 

At  the  end  of  two  years  John  Markley's  fat 
wit  told  him  that  it  was  a  losing  fight.  He  had 
been  dropped  from  the  head  of  the  Merchants' 
Association;  he  was  cut  off  from  the  executive 
committee  of  the  Fair;  he  was  not  asked  to  serve 
on  the  railroad  committee.  His  old  friends, 
whom  he  asked  over  to  spend  the  evening 
at  his  house,  always  had  good  excuses,  which 
they  gave  him  later  over  the  telephone,  and  their 
wives,  who  used  to  call  him  by  his  first  name, 
scarcely  recognised  him  on  the  street.  He  quit 


In  Our  Town  m 

coming  to  our  office  with  pieces  for  the  paper 
telling  the  town  his  views  on  this  or  that  local 
matter;  and  gradually  gave  up  the  fight  for 
his  old  place  on  the  school  board. 

The  clerks  in  the  Markley  Mortgage  Com- 
pany office  say  that  he  fell  into  a  moody  way, 
and  would  come  to  the  office  and  refuse  to  speak 
to  anyone  for  hours.  Also,  as  the  big  house 
often  glowed,  until  midnight  for  a  dance  of  the 
socially  impossible  who  used  the  Markley  ball- 
room, rent  free,  as  a  convenience,  John  Markley 
grew  to  have  a  sleepy  look  by  day,  and  lines 
came  into  his  red,  shaved  face.  He  grew 
anxious  about  his  health,  and  a  hundred  worries 
tightened  his  belt  and  shook  his  great  fat  hand, 
just  the  least  in  the  world,  and  when  through 
some  gossip  that  his  wife  brought  him  from  the 
jkitchen  he  felt  the  scorn  of  an  old  friend  burn 
his  soul  like  a  caustic,  for  many  days  he  would 
brood  over  it.  Finally  care  began  to  chisel 
down  his  flinty  face,  to  cut  the  fat  from  his  bull 
neck,  so  that  the  cords  stood  out,  and,  through 
staring  in  impotent  rage  and  pain  at  the  ceiling 
in  the  darkness  of  the  night,  red  rims  began 
to  worm  around  his  eyes.  He  was  not  sixty 


ii2  In  Our  Town 

years  old  then,  and  he  had  lashed  himself  into 
seventy. 

However  his  money-cunning  did  not  grow 
dull.  He  kept  his  golden  touch  and  his  impotent 
dollars  piled  higher  and  higher.  The  pile  must 
have  mocked  Isabel  Markley,  for  it  could 
bring  her  nothing  that  she  wanted.  She  stopped 
trying  to  give  big  parties  and  receptions.  Her 
social  efforts  tapered  down  to  little  dinners  for 
the  new  people  in  town.  But  as  the  dinner  hour 
grew  near  she  raged — so  the  servants  said — 
whenever  the  telephone  rang,  and  in  the  end 
she  had  to  give  up  even  the  dinner  scheme. 

So  there  came  a  time  when  they  began  to 
take  trips  to  the  seashore  and  the  mountains, 
flitting  from  hotel  to  hotel.  In  the  office  we 
knew  when  they  changed  quarters,  for  at  each 
resort  John  Markley  would  see  the  reporters 
and  give  out  a  long  interview,  which  was 
generally  prefaced  by  the  statement  that  he  was 
a  prominent  Western  capitalist,  who  had  re- 
fused the  nomination  for  Governor  or  for  Sena- 
tor, or  for  whatever  Isabel  Markley  happened 
to  think  of;  and  papers  containing  these  inter- 
views, marked  in  green  ink,  came  addressed  to 


As  the  dinner  hour  grew  near  she  raged — so  the  servants 
— whenever  the  telephone  rang 


In   Our  Town  113 

the  office  in  her  stylish,  angular  hand.  During 
grand  opera  season  one  might  see  the  Mark- 
leys  hanging  about  the  great  hotels  of  Chicago 
or  Kansas  City,  he  a  tired,  sleepy-faced,  pre- 
maturely old  man,  who  seemed  to  be  counting 
the  hours  till  bedtime,  and  she  a  tailored,  rather 
overfed  figure,  with  a  freshly  varnished  face 
and  unhealthy,  bright,  bold  eyes,  walking 
slightly  ahead  of  her  shambling  companion, 
looking  nervously  about  her  in  search  of  some 
indefinite  thing  that  was  gone  from  her  life. 

One  day  John  Markley  shuffled  into  our 
office,  bedizened  as  usual,  and  fumbled  in  his 
pocket  for  several  minutes  before  he  could  find 
the  copy  of  the  Mexican  Herald  containing  the 
news  of  his  boy's  death  in  Vera  Cruz.  He  had 
passed  the  time  of  life  for  tears,  yet  when  he 
asked  us  to  reprint  the  item  he  said  sadly:  "  The 
old  settlers  will  remember  him — maybe.  I 
don't  know  whether  they  will  or  not."  He 
seemed  a  pitiful  figure  as  he  dragged  himself 
out  of  the  office — so  stooped  and  weazened,  and 
so  utterly  alone,  but  when  he  turned  around  and 
came  back  upon  some  second  thought,  his  teeth 
snapped  viciously  as  he  snarled :  "  Here,  give 


iH  In  Our  Town 

it  back.  I  guess  I  don't  want  it  printed.  They 
don't  care  for  me,  anyway." 

The  boys  in  his  office  told  the  boys  in  our  office 
that  the  old  man  was  cross  and  petulant  that 
year,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  Isabel  Markley 
was  beginning  to  find  her  mess  of  pottage 
bitter.  The  women  around  town,  who  have  a 
wireless  system  of  collecting  news,  said  that  the 
Markleys  quarrelled,  and  that  she  was  cruel  to 
him.  Certain  it  is  that  she  began  to  feed  on 
young  boys,  and  made  the  old  fellow  sit  up  in 
his  evening  clothes  until  impossible  hours,  for 
sheer  appearance  sake,  while  his  bed  was  piled 
with  the  wraps  of  boys  and  girls  from  what  our 
paper  called  the  Hand-holders'  Union,  who  were 
invading  the  Markley  home,  eating  the  Markley 
olives  and  canned  lobster,  and  dancing  to  the 
music  of  the  Markley  pianola.  Occasionally  a 
young  travelling  man  would  be  spoken  of  by 
these  young  people  as  Isabel  Markley's  fellow. 

Mrs.  Markley  began  to  make  fun  of  her 
husband  to  the  girls  of  the  third-rate  dancing 
set  whose  mothers  let  them  go  to  her  house; 
also,  she  reviled  John  Markley  to  the  servants. 
It  was  known  in  the  town  that  she  nicknamed 


In  Our  Town  115 

him  the  "  Goat."  As  for  Markley,  the  fight 
was  gone  from  him,  and  his  whole  life  was 
devoted  to  getting  money.  That  part  of  his 
brain  which  knew  the  accumulative  secret  kept 
its  tireless  energy;  but  his  emotions,  his  sensi- 
bilities, his  passions  seemed  to  be  either  atro- 
phied or  burned  out,  and,  sitting  at  his  desk  in 
the  back  room  of  the  Mortgage  Company's 
offices,  he  looked  like  a  busy  spider  spinning 
his  web  of  gold  around  the  town.  It  was  the 
town  theory  that  he  and  Isabel  must  have 
fought  it  out  to  a  finish  about  the  night  ses- 
sions; for  there  came  a  time  when  he  went  to 
bed  at  nine  o'clock,  and  she  either  lighted  up 
and  prepared  to  celebrate  with  the  cheap  people 
at  home,  or  attached  one  of  her  young  men,  and 
went  out  to  some  impossible  gathering — gen- 
erally where  there  was  much  beer,  and  many 
risque  things  said,  and  the  women  were  all 
good  fellows.  And  thus  another  year  flew  by. 

One  night,  when  the  great  house  was  still, 
John  Markley  grew  sick  and,  in  the  terror  of 
death  that,  his  office  people  say,  was  always 
with  him,  rose  to  call  for  help.  In  the  dark  hall, 
feeling  for  an  electric-light  switch,  he  must  have 


n6  In   Our  Town 

lost  his  way,  for  he  fell  down  the  hard  oak 
stairs.  It  was  never  known  how  long  he  lay 
there  unable  to  move  one-half  of  his  body,  but 
his  wife  stood  nearly  an  hour  at  the  front  door 
that  night,  and  when  she  finally  switched  on  the 
light,  she  and  the  man  with  her  saw  Markley 
lying  before  them  with  one  eye  shut  and  with 
half  his  face  withered  and  dead,  the  other  half 
around  the  open  eye  quivering  with  hate.  He 
choked  on  an  oath,  and  shook  at  her  a  gnarled 
bare  arm.  Her  face  was  flushed,  and  her 
tongue  was  unsure,  but  she  laughed  a  shrill, 
wicked  laugh  and  cried:  "  Ah,  you  old  goat; 
don't  you  double  your  fist  at  me !  " 

Whereupon  she  shuddered  away  from  the 
shaking  figure  at  her  feet  and  scurried  upstairs. 
And  the  man  standing  in  the  doorway,  wonder- 
ing what  the  old  man  had  heard,  wakened  the 
house,  and  helped  to  carry  John  Markley  up- 
stairs to  his  bed. 

It  was  nearly  three  months  before  he  could 
be  wheeled  to  his  office,  where  he  still  sits  every 
day,  spinning  his  golden  web  and  filling  his  soul 
with  poison.  They  say  that,  helpless  as  he  is, 
he  may  live  for  a  score  of  years.  Isabel  Mark- 


In  Our  Town  117 

ley  knows  how  old  she  will  be  then.  A  thousand 
times  she  has  counted  it. 

To  see  our  town  of  a  summer  twilight,  with 
the  families  riding  abroad  behind  their  good 
old  nags,  under  the  overhanging  elms  that  meet 
above  our  newly-paved  streets,  one  would  not 
think  that  there  could  exist  in  so  lovely  a  place 
as  miserable  a  creature  as  John  Markley  is; 
or  as  Isabel,  his  wife,  for  that  matter.  The 
town — out  beyond  Main  Street,  which  is  al- 
ways dreary  and  ugly  with  tin  gorgons  on  the 
cornices — the  town  is  a  great  grove  springing 
from  a  bluegrass  sod,  with  porch  boxes  making 
flecks  of  colour  among  the  vines;  cannas  and  ele- 
phant ears  and  foliage  plants  rise  from  the  wide 
lawns;  and  children  bloom  like  moving  flowers 
all  through  the  picture. 

There  are  certain  streets,  like  the  one  past 
the  Markley  mansion,  upon  which  we  make  it 
a  point  always  to  drive  with  our  visitors — show 
streets  we  may  as  well  frankly  call  them — and 
one  of  these  leads  down  a  wide,  handsome 
street  out  to  the  college.  There  the  town  often 
goes  in  its  best  bib  and  tucker  to  hear  the 
lecturers  whom  Mrs.  Markley  feeds.  Last 


n8  In  Our  Town 

winter  one  came  who  converted  Dan  Gregg — 
once  Governor,  but  for  ten  years  best  known 
among  us  as  the  town  infidel.  The  lecturer  ex- 
plained how  matter  had  probably  evolved  from 
some  one  form — even  the  elements  coming  in  a 
most  natural  way  from  a  common  source.  He 
made  it  plain  that  all  matter  is  but  a  form  of 
motion;  that  atoms  themselves  are  divided 
into  ions  and  corpuscles,  which  are  merely  dif- 
ferent forms  of  electrical  motion,  and  that  all 
this  motion  seems  to  tend  to  one  form,  which  is 
the  spirit  of  the  universe.  Dan  said  he  had 
found  God  there,  and,  although  the  pious  were 
shocked,  in  our  office  we  were  glad  that  Dan  had 
found  his  God  anywhere.  While  we  were  sit- 
ting in  front  of  the  office  one  fine  evening  this 
spring,  looking  at  the  stars  and  talking  of  Dan 
Gregg's  God  and  ours,  we  began  to  wonder 
whether  or  not  the  God  that  is  the  spirit  of 
things  at  the  base  of  this  material  world  might 
not  be  indeed  the  spirit  that  moves  men  to 
execute  His  laws.  Men  in  the  colleges  to-day 
think  they  have  found  the  moving  spirit  of 
matter;  but  do  they  know  His  wonderful  being 
as  well  as  the  old  Hebrew  prophets  knew  it  who 


In  Our  Town  119 

wrote  the  Psalms  and  the  Proverbs  and  the 
wisdom  of  the  Great  Book.  That  brought  us 
back  to  the  old  question  about  John  Markley. 
Was  it  God,  moving  in  us,  that  punished  Mark- 
ley  "  by  the  rod  of  His  wrath,"  that  used  our 
hearts  as  wireless  stations  for  His  displeasure 
to  travel  through,  or  was  it  the  chance  prejudice 
of  a  simple  people?  It  was  late  when  we  broke 
up  and  left  the  office — Dan  Gregg,  Henry 
Larmy,  the  reporter,  and  old  George.  As 
we  parted,  looking  up  at  the  stars  where  our 
ways  divided  out  under  the  elms,  we  heard,  far 
up  Exchange  Street,  the  clatter  of  the  pianola 
in  the  Markley  home,  and  saw  the  high  win- 
dows glowing  like  lost  souls  in  the  night. 


VIII 


cc 


A  Bundle  of  Myrrh 


ONE  of  the  first  things  that  a  new  re- 
porter on  our  paper  has  to  learn  is  the 
kinology  of  the  town.  Until  he  knows 
who  is  kin  to  whom,  and  how,  a  reporter  is  likely 
at  any  time  to  make  a  bad  break.  Now,  the 
kinology  of  a  country  town  is  no  simple  prop- 
osition. After  a  man  has  spent  ten  years  writ- 
ing up  weddings,  births  and  deaths,  attending 
old  settlers'  picnics,  family  reunions  and  golden 
weddings,  he  may  run  into  a  new  line  of  kin  that 
opens  a  whole  avenue  of  hitherto  unexplainable 
facts  to  him,  showing  why  certain  families  line 
up  in  the  ward  primaries,  and  why  certain 
others  are  fighting  tooth  and  toe-nail. 

The  only  person  in  town  who  knows  all  of 
our  kinology — and  most  of  that  in  the  county, 
where  it  is  a  separate  and  interminable  study — 
is  "  Aunt "  Martha  Merryfield.  She  has  lived 
here  since  the  early  fifties,  and  was  a  Perkins, 
one  of  the  eleven  Perkins  children  that  grew 

120 


In  Our  Town  121 

up  in  town;  and  the  Perkinses  were  related  by 
marriage  to  the  Mortons,  of  whom  there  are 
over  fifty  living  adult  descendants  on  the  town- 
site  now.  So  one  begins  to  see  why  she  is  called 
"  Aunt  Martha  "  Merryfield.  She  is  literally 
aunt  to  over  a  hundred  people  here,  and  the 
habit  of  calling  her  aunt  has  spread  from  them 
to  the  rest  of  the  population. 

She  lives  alone  in  the  big  brick  house  on  the 
hill,  though  her  children  and  grandchildren  and 
great-grandchildren  are  in  and  out  all  day  and 
most  of  the  night,  so  that  she  is  not  at  all  lone- 
some. She  is  the  only  person  to  whom  we  can 
look  for  accurate  information  about  local  his- 
tory, and  when  a  man  dies  who  has  been  at  all 
prominent  in  affairs  of  the  town  or  county  or 
State,  we  always  call  up  "  Aunt  "  Martha  on  the 
'phone,  or  send  a  reporter  to  her,  to  learn  the 
real  printable  and  unprintable  truth  about  him. 
She  knows  whom  he  "  went  with  "  before  he  was 
married,  and  why  they  "  broke  off,"  and  what 
crowd  he  associated  with  in  the  early  days ;  how 
he  got  his  money,  and  what  they  used  to  "  say  " 
about  him.  If  a  family  began  putting  on  frills, 
she  can  tell  how  the  head  of  the  house  got 


122  In  Our  Town 

his  start  by  stealing  "  aid  "  sent  to  the  grass- 
hopper sufferers  and  opening  a  store  with  the 
goods.  If  a  woman  begins  speaking  of  the  hired 
girl  as  her  "  maid,"  contrary  to  the  vernacular 
rules  of  the  town,  Aunt  Martha  does  not  hesi- 
tate to  bring  up  the  subject  of  the  flour-sack 
underwear  which  the  woman  wore  when  she 
was  a  girl  during  the  drought  of  '60. 

Aunt  Martha  used  to  bring  us  flowers  for 
the  office  table,  and  it  was  her  delight  to  sit 
down  and  take  out  her  corn-knife — as  she  called 
it — and  go  after  the  town  shams.  She  has  prom- 
ised a  dozen  times  to  write  an  article  for  the 
paper,  which  she  says  we  dare  not  print,  entitled 
"  Self-made  Women  I  Have  Known."  She  says 
that  men  were  always  bragging  about  how  they 
had  clerked,  worked  on  farms,  dug  ditches  and 
whacked  mules  across  the  plains  before  the  rail- 
roads came;  but  that  their  wives  insisted  that 
they  were  princesses  of  the  royal  blood.  She 
says  she  is  going  to  include  in  her  Self-made 
Women  only  those  who  have  worked  out,  and 
she  maintains  that  we  will  be  surprised  at  the 
list. 

Her    particular    animosity    in    the    town    is 


In  Our  Town  123 

Mrs.  Julia  Neal  Worthington.  Aunt  Martha 
told  us  that  when  Tim  Neal  came  to  town  he 
had  a  brogue  you  could  scrape  with  a  knife  and 
an  "  O  "  before  his  name  you  could  hoop  a 
hogshead  with.  "  And  that  woman,"  exclaimed 
Aunt  Martha,  when  she  was  under  full  sail, 
"  that  woman,  because  she  has  two  bookcases  in 
the  front  room  and  reads  the  book-reviews  in 
the  Delineator,  thinks  that  she  is  cultured. 
When  her  folks  first  came  to  town  they  were  as 
poor  as  Job's  turkey,  which  was  not  to  their 
discredit — everyone  was  poor  in  those  days. 
The  old  man  Neal  was  as  honest  an  old  Mick 
as  you'd  meet  in  a  day's  journey,  or  at  a  fair, 
and  he  used  to  run  a  lemonade  and  peanut  stand 
down  by  the  bank  corner.  But  his  girls,  who 
were  raised  on  it,  until  they  began  teaching 
school,  used  to  refer  to  the  peanut  stand  as 
*  papa's  hobby,1  pretend  that  he  only  ran  it  for 
recreation,  and  say:  *  Now  why  do  you  suppose 
papa  enjoys  it? — We  just  can't  get  him  to  give 
it  up  1 '  And  now  Julia  is  president  of  the 
Woman's  Federation,  has  stomach  trouble,  has 
had  two  operations,  and  is  suffering  untold 
agonies  with  acute  culturitis.  And  yet,"  Aunt 


124  In  Our  Town 

Martha  would  say  through  a  beatific  smile, 
"  she's  a  good-enough  woman  in  many  ways, 
and  I  wouldn't  say  anything  against  her  for  the 
world." 

Once  Miss  Larrabee,  the  society  editor, 
brought  back  this  from  a  visit  to  Aunt  Martha : 
"  I  know,  my  dear,  that  your  paper  says  there 
are  no  cliques  and  crowds  in  society  in  this 
town,  and  that  it  is  so  democratic.  But  you  and 
I  know  the  truth.  We  know  about  society  in 
this  town.  We  know  that  if  there  ever  was  a 
town  that  looked  like  a  side  of  bacon — streak 
of  lean  and  streak  of  fat  all  the  way  down — 
it  is  this  blessed  place.  Crowds? — why,  I've 
lived  here  over  fifty  years  and  it  was  always 
crowds.  'Way  back  in  the  days  when  the  boys 
used  to  pick  us  up  and  carry  us  across  Elm 
Creek  when  we  went  to  dances,  there  were 
crowds.  The  girls  who  crossed  on  the  boys' 
backs  weren't  considered  quite  proper  by  the 
girls  who  were  carried  over  in  the  boys'  arms. 
And  they  didn't  dance  in  the  same  set." 

Miss  Larrabee  says  she  looked  into  the  elder 
woman's  eyes  to  find  which  crowd  Aunt  Martha 
belonged  to,  when  she  flashed  out: 


In   Our  Town  125 

"  Oh,  child,  you  needn't  look  at  me — I  did 
both;  it  depended  on  who  was  looking!  But, 
as  I  was  saying,  if  anyone  knows  about  society 
in  this  town,  I  do.  I  went  to  every  dance  in 
town  for  the  first  twenty-five  years,  and  I  have 
made  potato  salad  to  pay  the  salary  of  every 
Methodist  preacher  for  the  past  thirty  years, 
and  I  ought  to  know  what  I'm  talking  about." 
There  was  fire  enough  to  twinkle  in  her  old 
eyes  as  she  spoke.  "  Beginning  at  the  bottom, 
one  may  say  that  the  base  of  society  is  the  little 
tads,  ranging  down  from  what  your  paper  calls 
the  Amalgamated  Handholders,  to  the  trundle- 
bed  trash  just  out  of  their  kissing  games.  It's 
funny  to  watch  the  little  tads  grow  up  and  pair 
off  and  see  how  bravely  they  try  to  keep  in  the 
swim.  I've  seen  ten  grandchildren  get  out  and 
Fve  a  great-grandchild  whose  mother  will  be 
pushing  her  out  before  she  is  old  enough  to 
know  anything.  When  young  people  get  married 
they  all  say  they're  not  going  to  be  old- 
marriedy,  and  they  hang  on  to  the  dances  and 
little  hops  until  the  first  baby  comes.  Then  they 
don't  get  out  to  the  dances  much,  but  they  join 
a  card  club." 


126  In   Our  Town 

In  her  dissertation  on  the  social  progress  of 
young  married  people,  Aunt  Martha  explained 
that  after  the  second  year  the  couple  go  only 
to  the  big  dances  where  everyone  is  invited, 
but  they  pay  more  attention  to  cards.  The  young 
mother  begins  going  to  afternoon  parties,  and 
has  the  other  young  married  couples  in  for 
dinner.  Then,  before  they  know  it,  they  are 
invited  out  to  receptions  and  parties,  where  little 
tads  preside  at  the  punch-bowls  and  wait  on 
table,  and  are  seen  and  not  heard.  Aunt  Martha 
continued : 

"  By  the  time  the  second  baby  comes  they 
take  one  of  two  shoots — either  go  in  for  church 
socials  or  edge  into  a  whist  club.  In  this  town, 
I  think,  on  the  whole,  that  the  Congregational 
Whist  Club  is  younger  and  gayer  than  the  Pres- 
byterian Whist  Club,  but  in  most  towns  the 
Episcopalians  have  the  really  fashionable  club. 
Of  course,  these  clubs  never  call  themselves  by 
the  church  names,  but  they  are  generally  made 
up  along  church  lines — except  we  poor  Metho- 
dists and  Baptists — we  have  to  divide  ourselves 
out  among  the  others  to  keep  the  preacher  from 
going  after  us." 


In  Our  Town  127 

Aunt  Martha's  eyes  danced  with  the  mischief 
in  her  heart  as  she  went  on :  "  Now,  if  after 
the  second  baby  comes,  the  young  parents  begin 
to  feel  like  saving  money,  and  being  someone 
at  the  bank,  they  join  the  church  and  go  in  for 
church  socials,  which  don't  take  so  much  time 
or  money  as  the  whist  clubs  and  receptions. 
The  babies  keep  coming  and  the  young  people 
keep  on  improving  their  home,  moving  from 
the  little  house  to  the  big  house;  the  young 
man's  name  begins  to  creep  into  lists  of  direc- 
tors at  the  bank,  and  they  are  invited  out  to  the 
big  parties,  and  she  goes  to  all  the  stand-up 
and  '  gabble-gobble-and-git '  receptions.  As  they 
grow  older,  they  are  asked  with  the  preachers 
and  widows  for  the  first  night  of  a  series  of 
parties  at  a  house  to  get  them  out  of  the  way 
and  over  with  before  the  young  folks  come  later 
in  the  week.  When  they  get  to  a  point  where 
the  young  folks  laugh  and  clap  their  hands  at 
little  pudgy  daddy  when  he  dances  *  Old  Dan 
Tucker '  at  the  big  parties  in  the  brick  houses, 
it's  all  up  with  them — they  are  old  married 
folks,  and  the  next  step  takes  them  to  the  old 
folks'  whist  club,  where  the  bankers'  wives  and 


128  In  Our  Town 

the  insurance  widows  run  things.  That  is  the 
inner  sanctuary,  the  holy  of  holies  in  the  society 
of  this  town." 

After  a  pause  Aunt  Martha  added:  "You'd 
think,  to  hear  these  chosen  people  talk,  that  the 
benighted  souls  who  go  to  missionary  teas, 
Woman's  Relief  Corps  chicken-pie  suppers,  and 
get  up  bean-dinners  for  the  church  on  election 
day,  live  on  another  planet.  Yet  I  guess  we're 
all  made  of  the  same  kind  of  mud. 

"  That  reminds  me  of  the  Winthrops.  When 
they  came  here,  back  in  the  sixties,  it  happened 
to  be  Fourth  of  July,  and  the  band  was  out 
playing  in  the  grove  by  the  depot.  Mrs.  Win- 
throp  got  off  the  train  quite  grandly  and 
bowed  and  waved  her  hand  to  the  band,  and  the 
Judge  walked  over  and  gave  the  band  leader 
five  dollars.  They  said  afterward  that  they  felt 
deeply  touched  to  find  a  raw  Western  town  so 
appreciative  of  the  coming  of  an  old  New  Eng- 
land family,  that  it  greeted  them  with  a  band. 
Before  Mrs.  Winthrop  had  been  here  three 
weeks  she  called  on  me,  *  as  one  of  the  first 
ladies  of  the  town/  she  said,  to  organise  and 
see  if  we  couldn't  break  up  the  habit  of  the 


In  Our  Town  129 

hired  girls  eating  at  the  table  with  the  family." 
Aunt  Martha  smiled  and  her  eyes  glittered  as 
she  added:  "After  they  organised,  the  titled 
aristocracy  of  this  town  did  their  own  work  and 
sent  the  washing  out  for  a  year  or  more." 

The  talk  drifted  back  to  the  old  days,  and 
Aunt  Martha  got  out  her  photograph-album 
and  showed  Miss  Larrabee  the  pictures  of  those 
whom  she  called  "  the  rude  forefathers  of  the 
village,"  in  their  quaint  old  costumes  of  war- 
times. In  the  book  were  baby  pictures  of  mid- 
dle-aged men  and  women,  and  youthful  pictures 
of  the  old  men  and  women  of  the  town.  But 
most  interesting  of  all  to  Miss  Larrabee  were 
the  daguerreotypes — quaint  old  portraits  in  their 
little  black  boxes,  framed  in  plush  and  gilt.  The 
old  woman  brought  out  picture  after  picture — 
her  husband's  among  the  others,  in  a  broad 
beaver  hat  with  a  high  choker  taken  back  in 
Brattleboro  before  he  came  to  Kansas.  She 
looked  at  it  for  a  long  minute,  and  then  said 
gaily  to  Miss  Larrabee :  "  He  was  a  handsome 
boy — quite  the  beau  of  the  State  when  we  were 
married — Judge  of  the  District  Court  at  twen- 
ty-four." She  held  the  case  in  her  hand  and 


13°  In  Our  Town 

went  on  opening  the  others.  She  came  to  one 
showing  a  moustached  and  goateed  youth  in  a 
captain's  uniform — a  slim,  straight,  soldierly 
figure.  As  she  passed  it  to  Miss  Larrabee 
Aunt  Martha  looked  sidewise  at  her,  saying: 
"  You  wouldn't  know  him  now.  Yet  you  see 
him  every  day,  I  suppose."  After  the  girl 
shook  her  head,  the  elder  woman  continued: 
"  Well,  that's  Jim  Purdy,  taken  the  day  he  left 
for  the  army."  She  sighed  as  she  said:  "Let 
me  see,  I  guess  I  haven't  happened  to  run  across 
Jim  for  ten  years  or  more,  but  he  didn't  look 
much  like  this  then.  Poor  old  Jim,  they  tell  me 
he's  not  having  the  best  time  in  the  world.  Some- 
way, all  the  old-timers  that  are  living  seem  to 
be  hard  up,  or  in  bad  health,  or  unhappy.  It 
doesn't  seem  right,  after  what  they've  done 
and  what  they've  gone  through.  But  I  guess 
it's  the  way  of  life.  It's  the  way  life  gets  even 
with  us  for  letting  us  outlive  the  others.  Com- 
pensation— as  Emerson  says." 

Miss  Larrabee  came  down  the  lilac-bor- 
dered walk  from  the  stately  old  brick  house, 
carrying  a  great  bouquet  of  sweet  peas  and 
nasturtiums  and  poppies  and  phlox,  a  fleeting 


Jim  Purely,  taken  the  day  he  left  for  the  army  " 


In  Our  Town  131 

memory  of  some  association  she  had  in  her  mind 
of  Uncle  Jimmy  Purdy  and  Aunt  Martha  kept 
tantalising  her.  She  could  not  get  it  out  of 
the  background  of  her  consciousness,  and  yet 
it  refused  to  form  itself  into  a  tangible  con- 
ception. It  was  associated  vaguely  with  her 
own  grandmother,  as  though,  infinite  ages  ago, 
her  grandmother  had  said  something  that  had 
lodged  the  idea  in  the  girl's  head. 

When  the  occasion  made  itself,  Miss  Larra- 
bee  asked  her  grandmother  the  question  that 
puzzled  her,  and  learned  that  Martha  Perkins 
and  Jim  Purdy  were  lovers  before  the  war,  and 
that  she  was  wearing  his  ring  when  he  went 
away — thinking  he  would  be  back  in  a  few 
weeks  with  the  Rebellion  put  down.  In  his  first 
fight  he  was  shot  in  the  head  and  was  in  the 
hospital  for  a  year,  demented;  when  he  was 
put  back  in  the  ranks  he  was  captured  and 
his  name  given  out  among  the  killed.  In  prison 
his  dementia  returned  and  he  stayed  there  two 
years.  Then  for  a  year  after  his  exchange  he 
followed  the  Union  Army  like  a  dumb  creature, 
and  not  until  two  years  after  the  close  of  the 
war  did  the  poor  fellow  drift  home  again,  as 


i32  In  Our  Town 

one  from  the  dead — all  uncertain  of  the  past 
and  unfitted  for  the  future. 

And  his  sweetheart  drank  her  cup  alone. 
The  old  settlers  say  that  she  never  flinched  nor 
shrank,  but  for  years,  even  after  her  marriage 
to  the  Judge,  the  young  woman  kept  a  little 
grave  covered  with  flowers,  that  bore  the  simple 
words :  "  Martha,  aged  five  months  and  three 
days."  They  say  that  she  did  not  lose  her  cour- 
age and  that  she  bent  her  head  for  no  one.  But 
the  war  brought  her  neighbours  so  many  sor- 
rows that  Martha's  trouble  was  forgotten,  the 
years  passed  and  only  the  old  people  of  the 
community  know  about  the  little  grave  beside 
the  Judge's  and  their  little  boy's.  Jimmy 
Purdy  grew  into  a  smooth-faced,  unwrinkled, 
rather  blank-eyed  old  man,  clerking  in  the  book- 
store for  a  time,  serving  as  City  Clerk  for 
twenty  years,  and  later  living  at  the  Palace 
Hotel  on  his  pension.  He  worshipped  Aunt 
Martha's  children  and  her  children's  children, 
but  he  never  saw  her  except  when  they  met  in 
some  casual  way.  She  was  married  when  he 
came  back  from  the  war,  and  if  he  ever  knew 
her  agony  he  never  spoke  of  it.  Whenever  he 


In  Our  Town  133 

talked  of  the  events  before  the  war,  his  face 
wore  a  troubled,  baffled  look,  and  he  did  not 
seem  to  remember  things  clearly.  He  was  a 
simple  old  man  with  a  boyish  face  and  heart  who 
was  confused  by  the  world  growing  old  around 
him. 

One  day  they  found  him  dead  in  his  bed. 
And  Miss  Larrabee  hurried  out  to  Aunt  Mar- 
tha's to  get  the  facts  about  his  life  for  the  paper. 
It  was  a  bright  October  morning  as  she  went  up 
the  walk  to  the  old  brick  house,  and  she  heard 
someone  playing  on  the  piano,  rolling  the 
chords  after  the  grandiose  manner  of  pianists 
fifty  years  ago.  A  voice  seemed  to  be  singing 
an  old  ballad.  As  the  girl  mounted  the  steps 
the  voice  came  more  distinctly  to  her.  It  was 
quavering  and  unsure,  but  with  a  moan  of 
passion  the  words  came  forth: 

"  As  I  lay  my  heart  on  your  dead  heart, — Douglas, 
Douglas,  Douglas,  tender  and  true " 

Suddenly  the  voice  choked  in  a  groan.  As 
she  stood  by  the  open  door  Miss  Larrabee  could 
see  in  the  darkened  room  the  figure  of  an  old 
woman  racked  with  sobs  on  a  great  mahogany 


134  In  Our  Town 

sofa,  and  on  the  floor  beside  her  lay  a  daguerreo- 
tYPe>  glinting  its  gilt  and  glass  through  the 
gloom. 

The  girl  tiptoed  across  the  porch,  down  the 
steps  through  the  garden  and  out  of  the  gate. 


IX 

Our  Loathed  but  Esteemed 
Contemporary 

NO  one  remembers  a  time  when  there 
were  not  two  newspapers  in  our  town 
— generally  quarrelling  with  each 
other.  Though  musicians  and  doctors  and  bar- 
bers are  always  jealous  of  their  business  rivals, 
and  though  they  show  their  envy  more  or  less 
to  their  discredit,  editors  are  so  jealous  of  one 
another,  and  so  shameless  about  it,  that  the 
profession  has  been  made  a  joke.  Certainly  in 
our  town  there  is  a  deep-seated  belief  that  if 
one  paper  takes  one  side  of  any  question,  even  so 
fair  a  proposition  as  street-paving,  the  other 
will  take  the  opposing  side. 

Of  course,  our  paper  has  not  been  contrary; 
but  we  have  noticed  a  good  many  times — every 
one  in  the  office  has  noticed  it,  the  boys  and 
girls  in  the  back-office,  and  the  boys  and  girls 
in  the  front-office — that  whenever  we  take  a 
stand  for  anything,  say  for  closing  the  stores 

135 


i36  In  Our  Town 

at  six  o'clock,  the  General  swings  the  States- 
man into  line  against  it.  If  he  has  done  it  once 
he  has  done  it  fifty  times  in  the  last  ten  years; 
and,  though  we  have  often  felt  impelled  to  op- 
pose some  of  the  schemes  which  he  has  brought 
forward,  it  has  been  because  they  were  bad  for 
the  town,  and  perhaps  because,  even  though  they 
did  seem  plausible,  we  knew  that  the  unscrupu- 
lous gang  that  was  behind  these  schemes  would 
in  some  way  turn  them  into  a  money-making 
plot  to  rob  the  people.  We  never  could  see  that 
justification  in  the  Statesman's  position.  To  us 
it  seemed  merely  pigheadedness.  But  the  passing 
years  are  teaching  us  to  appreciate  the  General 
better,  and  each  added  year  is  seeming  to  make 
us  more  tolerant  of  his  shortcomings. 

Counting  in  the  three  years  he  was  in  the 
army,  he  has  been  running  the  Statesman  for 
forty-five  years,  and  for  thirty-five  years  he 
was  master  of  the  field.  For  thirty  years  this 
town  was  known  as  General  A.  Jackson  Dur- 
ham's town.  He  ran  the  county  Republican 
conventions,  and  controlled  the  five  counties 
next  to  ours,  so  that,  though  he  could  never  go 
to  Congress  himself,  on  account  of  his  accumu- 


In  Our  Town  137 

lation  of  enemies,  he  always  named  the  success- 
ful candidate  from  the  district,  and  for  a  gen- 
eration held  undisturbed  the  selection  of  post- 
masters within  his  sphere  of  influence.  In  State 
politics  he  was  more  powerful  than  any  Con- 
gressman he  ever  made.  Often  he  came  down  to 
the  State  Convention  with  blood  in  his  eye  after 
the  political  scalp  of  some  politician  who  had 
displeased  him,  and  the  fight  he  made  and  the 
disturbance  he  started,  gave  him  the  name  of 
Old  Bull  Durham.  On  such  occasions,  he  would 
throw  back  his  head,  shut  his  eyes  and  roar  his 
wrath  at  his  opponents  in  a  most  disquieting 
manner,  and  when  he  returned  home,  whether 
he  had  won  or  lost  his  fight,  his  paper  would 
bristle  for  two  or  three  weeks  with  rage,  and 
his  editorial  page  would  be  full  of  lurid  articles 
written  in  short  exclamatory  sentences,  pocked 
with  italics,  capital  letters  and  black-faced 
lines. 

For  General  A.  Jackson  Durham  was  a  fire- 
eater  and  was  proud  of  it.  He  advertised  the 
fact  that  he  was  a  good  hater  by  showing  his 
barrel  to  callers  at  his  office.  In  that  barrel  he 
had  filed  away  every  disreputable  thing  that  he 


138  In  Our  Town 

had  been  able  to  find  against  friend  or  foe,  far  or 
near,  and  when  the  friend  became  a  foe,  or  the 
foe  became  troublesome,  the  General  opened  his 
barrel.  He  kept  also  an  office  blacklist,  on  which 
were  written  the  names  of  the  men  in  town  that 
were  never  to  be  printed  in  the  Statesman. 
When  we  established  our  little  handbill  of  a 
newspaper,  he  made  all  manner  of  fun  of  our 
"  dish-rag,"  as  he  called  it,  and  insisted  on  writ- 
ing so  much  about  our  paper  that  people  read  it 
to  see  what  we  had  to  say.  Other  papers  had 
made  the  mistake  of  replying  to  the  General  in 
kind,  and  people  had  soon  tired  of  the  quarrel 
and  dropped  the  new  quarrelling  paper  for  the 
old  one.  The  State  never  had  seen  the  General's 
equal  as  a  wrangler;  but  we  did  not  fight  back, 
and  there  was  only  a  one-sided  quarrel  for  the 
people  to  tire  of.  We  grew  and  got  a  foothold 
in  the  town,  but  the  General  never  admitted  it. 
He  does  not  admit  it  now,  though  his  paper  has 
been  cut  down  time  and  again,  and  is  no  larger 
than  our  little  dish-rag  was  in  the  beginning. 
But  he  still  maintains  his  old  assumpton  of  the 
power  that  departed  years  ago.  He  walked 
proudly  out  of  the  County  Conventon  the  day 


In  Our  Town  139 

that  it  rode  over  him,  and  he  still  begins  the 
names  of  the  new  party  leaders  in  the  county  in 
small  letters  to  show  his  contempt  for  them. 

The  day  of  his  downfall  in  the  County  Con- 
vention marked  the  beginning  of  his  decline  in 
State  politics.  When  it  was  known  that  his 
county  was  against  him,  people  ceased  to  fear 
him  and  in  time  new  leaders  came  in  the  State 
whom  he  did  not  know  even  by  sight;  but  the 
General  did  not  recognise  them  as  leaders.  To 
him  they  were  interlopers.  He  sent  his  paper 
regularly  to  the  old  leaders,  who  had  been 
shoved  aside  as  he  had  been,  and  wrote  letters 
to  them  urging  them  to  arouse  the  people  to 
throw  off  the  chains  of  bossdom.  Five  years 
ago  he  and  a  number  of  lonesome  and  forgotten 
ones,  who  formerly  ruled  the  State  with  an  iron 
hand,  and  whose  arrogance  had  cost  the  party  a 
humiliating  defeat,  organised  the  "  Anti-Boss 
League,"  and  held  semi-annual  conventions  at 
the  capital.  They  made  long  speeches  and  is- 
sued long  proclamations,  and  called  vehemently 
upon  the  people  to  rend  their  chains,  but  some 
way  the  people  didn't  heed  the  call,  and  the 
General  and  his  boss-busters,  as  they  were 


14°  In  Our  Town 

called,  began  to  have  hard  work  getting  their 
"  calls  "  and  "  proclamations  "  and  "  ad- 
dresses "  into  the  city  papers.  The  reporters  re- 
ferred to  them  as  the  Ancient  Order  of  Has- 
Beens,  and  wounded  the  GeneraPs  pride  by  call- 
ing him  Past  Master  of  the  Grand  Lodge  of 
Hons.  He  came  home  from  the  meeting  of  the 
boss-busters  at  which  this  insult  had  been  heaped 
upon  him  and  bellowed  like  a  mad  bull  for  six 
months,  using  so  much  space  in  his  paper  that 
there  was  no  room  at  all  for  local  news. 

In  the  General's  idea  of  what  a  newspaper 
should  contain,  news  does  not  come  first,  and 
he  does  not  mind  crowding  it  out.  He  believes 
that  a  newspaper  should  stand  for  "  principles." 
The  Statesman  was  started  during  the  progress 
of  the  Civil  War,  when  issues  were  news,  and 
the  General  has  never  been  able  to  realize  that 
in  times  of  peace  people  buy  a  newspaper  for  its 
news  and  not  for  its  opinions.  He  never  could 
understand  our  attitude  toward  what  he  called 
"  principles."  When  the  town  was  for  free 
silver,  we  were  for  the  gold  standard,  and  we 
never  exerted  ourselves  particularly  for  a  high 
tariff,  and  when  the  General  saw  our  paper 


In  Our  Town  14 I 

grow  in  spite  of  its  heresies,  he  was  amazed, 
and  expressed  his  amazement  in  columns  of 
vitriolic  anger.  Because  we  often  ignored 
"  issues  "  and  "  principles  "  and  "  great  basic 
and  fundamental  ideas,"  as  he  called  his  conten- 
tions on  the  silver  and  tariff  questions,  for  lists 
of  delegates  at  conventions,  names  of  pupils  at 
the  county  institute,  and  winners  of  prizes  at 
the  fair,  he  was  filled  with  alarm  for  the  future 
of  the  noble  calling  of  journalism. 

Long  ago  we  quit  making  fun  of  him.  One 
day  we  wrote  an  article  referring  to  him  as 
"  the  old  man,"  and  it  was  gossiped  among  the 
printers  that  he  was  cut  to  the  heart.  He  did 
not  reply  to  that,  and  although  a  few  days  later 
he  referred  to  us  as  thieves  and  villains,  we 
never  had  the  heart  to  tease  him  again,  and  now 
every  one  around  the  office  has  instructions  to 
put  "  General  "  before  his  name  whenever  it  is 
used.  Probably  this  cheers  him  up.  At  least  it 
should  do  so,  for  in  spite  of  his  pride  and  his 
much  advertised  undying  wrath,  he  is  in  truth 
a  tender-hearted  old  man,  and  has  never  been 
disloyal  to  the  town.  It  is  the  apple  of  his 
eye.  His  fierceness  has  always  been  more  for 


142  In  Our  Town 

publication  than  as  an  evidence  of  good  faith. 
He  likes  to  think  that  he  is  unforgiving  and  re- 
lentless, but  he  has  a  woman's  heart.  He  fought 
the  renomination  of  Grant  for  a  third  term 
most  bitterly,  but  when  the  old  commander 
died,  the  boys  in  the  Statesman  office  say  that 
Durham  sniffled  gently  while  he  wrote  the 
obituary,  and  when  he  closed  with  the  words 
"  Poor  Grant,"  he  laid  his  head  on  the  table 
and  his  frame  shook  in  real  sorrow. 

Most  of  the  subscribers  have  left  his  paper, 
and  few  of  the  advertisers  use  it,  but  what 
seems  to  hurt  him  worst  is  his  feeling  that  the 
town  has  gone  back  on  him.  He  has  given 
all  of  his  life  to  this  town;  he  has  spent  thous- 
ands of  dollars  to  promote  its  growth;  he  has 
watched  every  house  on  the  town-site  rise, 
and  has  made  an  item  in  his  paper  about  it; 
he  has  written  up  the  weddings  of  many  of  the 
grandmothers  and  grandfathers  of  the  town; 
he  has  chronicled  the  birth  of  their  children 
and  children's  children.  The  old  scrapbooks  are 
filled  with  kind  things  that  the  General  has 
written.  Old  men  and  old  women  scan  these 
wrinkled  pages  with  eyes  that  have  lost  their 


In  Our  Town  H3 

lustre,  and  on  the  rusty  clippings  pasted  there 
fall  many  tears.  In  this  book  many  a  woman 
reads  the  little  verse  below  the  name  of  a  child 
whom  only  she  and  God  remember.  In  some 
other  scrapbook  a  man,  long  since  out  of  the 
current  of  life,  reads  the  story  of  his  little  tri- 
umph in  the  world;  in  the  family  Bible  is  a  clip- 
ping from  the  Statesman — yellow  and  crisp  with 
years — that  tells  of  a  daughter's  wedding  and 
the  social  glory  that  descended  upon  the  house 
for  that  one  great  day.  So,  as  the  General  goes 
about  the  streets  of  the  town,  in  his  shiny  long 
frockcoat  and  his  faded  campaign  hat,  men  do 
not  laugh  at  him,  nor  do  they  hate  him.  He  is 
the  old  buffalo,  horned  out  of  the  herd. 

The  profession  of  newspaper  making  is  a 
young  man's  profession.  The  time  will  come 
when  over  at  our  office  there  will  be  a  shrink- 
age. Even  now  our  leading  citizens  never  go 
away  from  town  and  talk  to  other  newspaper 
men  that  they  do  not  say  that  if  someone  would 
come  over  here  and  start  a  bright,  spicy  news- 
paper he  could  drive  us  out  of  town  and  make 
money.  The  best  friends  we  have,  when  they 
talk  to  newspaper  men  in  other  towns  are  not 


144  In  Our  Town 

above  saying  that  our  paper  is  so  generally  hated 
that  it  would  be  no  trouble  to  put  it  out  of 
business.  That  is  what  people  said  of  the  Gen- 
eral in  the  eighties.  They  do  not  say  it  now. 

For  the  fight  is  over  with  him.  And  he  is 
walking  on  an  old  battlefield,  reviewing  old 
victories,  not  knowing  that  another  contest  is 
waging  further  on.  Sometimes  the  boys  in  the 
Statesman  office  get  their  money  Saturday 
night,  and  sometimes  they  do  not.  If  they  do 
not,  the  General  grandly  issues  "  orders  "  on 
the  grocery  stores.  Then  he  takes  his  pen  in 
hand  and  writes  a  stirring  editorial  on  the  bat- 
tle of  Cold  Harbor,  and  closes  by  enquiring 
whether  the  country  is  going  to  forget  the 
grand  principles  that  inspired  men  in  those 
trying  days. 

In  the  days  when  the  Statesman  was  a  power 
in  the  land,  editorials  like  this  were  widely 
quoted.  He  was  department  commander  of  the 
G.  A.  R.  at  a  time  when  such  a  personage  was 
as  important  in  our  State  as  the  Governor.  The 
General's  editorials  on  pensions  were  read  be- 
fore the  Pensions  Committee  in  Congress  and 
had  much  weight  there,  and  even  in  the  White 


In  Our  Town  H5 

House  the  General's  attitude  was  reckoned 
with.  When  he  rallied  the  old  soldiers  to  any 
cause  the  earth  trembled,  but  now  the  General's 
editorials  pass  unheeded.  When  he  calls  to 
"  the  men  who  defended  this  country  in  one 
great  crisis  to  rise  and  rescue  her  again/'  he 
does  not  understand  that  he  is  speaking  to  a 
world  of  ghosts,  and  that  his  "  clarion  note  " 
falls  on  empty  air.  The  old  boys  whom  he 
would  arouse  are  sleeping;  only  he  and  a  little 
handful  survive.  Yet  to  him  they  still  live;  to 
him  their  power  is  still  invincible — if  they 
would  but  rally  to  the  old  call.  He  believes  that 
some  day  they  will  rally,  and  that  the  world, 
which  is  now  going  sadly  wrong,  will  be  set 
right.  With  his  hands  clasped  behind  him, 
looking  through  his  steel-rimmed  glasses,  from 
under  his  shaggy  brows,  he  walks  through  a 
mad  world,  waiting  for  it  to  return  to  reason. 
In  his  fiery  black  eyes  one  may  see  a  puzzled 
look  as  he  views  the  bewildering  show.  He  is 
confused,  but  defiant.  His  head  is  still  high; 
he  has  no  thought  of  surrender.  So,  day  after 
day,  he  riddles  the  bedlam  about  him  with  his 
broadsides,  in  the  hourly  hope  of  victory. 


In  Our  Town 

It  was  only  last  week  that  the  General  was 
in  Jim  Bolton's  livery  stable  office  asking  Jim 
if  he  had  any  old  ledgers,  that  the  Statesman 
office  might  have.  He  explained  that  he  tore  off 
their  covers,  cut  them  up  and  used  the  unspoiled 
sheets  for  copy-paper.  In  Bolton's  office  he  met 
a  farmer  from  the  Folcraft  neighbourhood  in 
the  southern  end  of  the  county,  who  hadn't  seen 
the  General  for  half-a-dozen  years.  "  Why — 
hello  General,"  exclaimed  the  farmer  with  un- 
concealed surprise,  as  though  addressing  one 
risen  from  the  dead.  "You  still  around  here? 
What  are  you  doing  now?"  The  old  man 
tucked  the  ledger  under  his  arm,  straightened 
up  with  great  dignity,  and  tried  not  to  wince 
under  the  blow.  He  put  one  hand  in  his  shiny, 
frayed,  greenish-black  frockcoat,  and  replied 
with  quiet  dignity,  "  I  am  following  my  profes- 
sion, sir — that  of  a  journalist."  And  after  fix- 
ing the  farmer  with  his  piercing  black  eyes  for 
a  moment,  the  General  turned  away  and  was 
gone. 

When  we  do  something  to  displease  him,  he 
turns  all  his  guns  on  us,  though  probably  his 
foreman  has  to  borrow  paper  from  our  office 


In  Our  Town  147 

to  get  the  Statesman  out.  The  General  regards 
us  as  his  natural  prey  and  his  foreman  regards 
our  paper  stock  as  his  natural  forage — but  they 
use  so  little  that  we  do  not  mind. 

Once  a  new  bookkeeper  in  our  office  saw  the 
General's  old  account  for  paper.  She  sent  the 
General  a  statement,  and  another,  and  in  the 
third  she  put  the  words:  "  Please  remit"  The 
day  after  he  had  received  the  insult  the  General 
stalked  grandly  into  the  office  with  the  amount 
of  money  required  by  the  bookkeeper.  He  put 
it  down  without  a  word  and  walked  over  to  the 
desk  where  the  proprietor  was  working. 

"Young  man,"  said  the  General,  as  he 
rapped  with  his  cane  on  the  desk.  u  I  was  talk- 
ing to-day  with  a  gentleman  from  Norwalk, 
Ohio,  who  knew  your  father.  Yes,  sir;  he 
knew  your  father,  and  speaks  highly  of  him, 
sir.  I  am  surprised  to  hear,  sir,  that  your  father 
was  a  perfect  gentleman,  sir.  Good-morning, 


sir." 


And  with  that  the  General  moved  majesti- 
cally out  of  the  office. 


X 


A   Question  of  Climate 

COLONEL  MORRISON  had  three 
initials,  so  the  town  naturally  called 
him  "  Alphabetical "  Morrison,  and 
dropped  the  "  Colonel."  He  came  to  our  part 
of  the  country  in  an  early  day — he  used  to  ex- 
plain that  they  caught  him  in  the  trees,  when  he 
was  drinking  creek  water,  eating  sheep-sorrel, 
and  running  wild  with  a  buffalo  tail  for  a  trolley, 
and  that  the  first  thing  they  did,  after  teaching 
him  to  eat  out  of  a  plate,  was  to  set  him  at  work 
in  the  grading  gang  that  was  laying  out  the 
Cottonwood  and  Walnut  Rivers  and  putting 
the  limestone  in  the  hills.  He  was  one  of  the 
original  five  patriots  who  laid  out  the  Corn 
Belt  Railroad  from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Pa- 
cific, and  was  appointed  one  of  that  committee 
to  take  the  matter  to  New  York  for  the  inspec- 
tion of  capitalists — and  be  it  said  to  the  credit 
of  Alphabetical  Morrison  that  he  was  the  only 
person  in  the  crowd  with  money  enough  to  pay 
148 


In  Our  Town  149 

the  ferryman  when  he  reached  the  Missouri 
River,  though  he  had  only  enough  to  get  him- 
self across.  But  in  spite  of  that  the  road  was 
built,  and  though  it  missed  our  town,  it  was 
because  we  didn't  vote  the  bonds,  though  old 
Alphabetical  went  through  the  county,  roaring 
in  the  schoolhouses,  bellowing  at  the  cross- 
roads, and  doing  all  that  a  good,  honest  pair  of 
lungs  could  do  for  the  cause.  However,  he  was 
not  dismayed  at  his  failure,  and  began  imme- 
diately to  organise  a  company  to  build  another 
road.  We  finally  secured  a  railroad,  though  it 
was  only  a  branch. 

Over  his  office  door  he  had  a  sign — "  Land 
Office  " — painted  on  the  false  board  front  of  the 
building  in  letters  as  big  as  a  cow,  and  the 
first  our  newspaper  knew  of  him  was  twenty 
years  ago,  when  he  brought  in  an  order  for  some 
stationery  for  the  Commercial  Club.  At  that 
time  we  had  not  heard  that  the  town  supported 
a  Commercial  Club — nor  had  anyone  else 
heard  of  it,  for  that  matter — for  old  Alpha- 
betical was  the  president,  and  his  bookkeeper, 
with  the  Miss  dropped  off  her  name,  was  secre- 
tary. But  he  had  a  wonderfully  alluring  let- 


^5°  In  Our  Town 

terhead  printed,  and  seemed  to  get  results,  for 
he  made  a  living  while  his  competitors  starved. 
Later,  when  he  found  time,  he  organised  a  real 
Commercial  Club,  and  had  himself  elected  presi- 
dent of  it.  He  used  to  call  meetings  of  the  club 
to  discuss  things,  but  as  no  one  cared  much 
for  his  monologues  on  the  future  of  the  town, 
the  attendance  was  often  light.  He  issued  cir- 
culars referring  to  our  village  as  "  the  Queen 
City  of  the  Prairies,"  and  on  the  circulars  was 
a  map,  showing  that  the  Queen  City  of  the 
Prairies  was  "  the  railroad  axis  of  the  West." 
There  was  one  road  running  into  the  town;  the 
others  old  Alphabetical  indicated  with  dotted 
lines,  and  explained  in  a  foot-note  that  they 
were  in  process  of  construction. 

He  became  possessed  of  a  theory  that  a  can- 
ning factory  would  pay  in  the  Queen  City  of  the 
Prairies,  and  the  first  step  he  took  toward  build- 
ing it  was  to  invest  in  a  high  hat,  a  long  coat 
and  white  vest,  and  a  pair  of  mouse-coloured 
trousers.  With  these  and  his  theory  he  went 
East  and  returned  with  a  condition.  The  can- 
ning factory  went  up,  but  the  railroad  rates 
went  wrong,  and  the  factory  was  never  opened. 


In  Our  Town  151 

Alphabetical  blinked  at  it  through  his  gold- 
rimmed  glasses  for  a  few  weeks,  and  then  or- 
ganised a  company  to  turn  it  into  a  woollen 
mill.  He  elected  himself  president  of  that  com- 
pany and  used  to  bring  around  to  our  paper, 
notices  of  directors'  meetings,  and  while  he  was 
in  the  office  he  would  insist  that  we  devoted  too 
much  space  to  idle  gossip  and  not  enough  to 
the  commercial  and  industrial  interests  of  the 
Queen  City. 

At  times  he  would  bring  in  an  editorial  that 
he  had  written  himself,  highly  excitable  and 
full  of  cyclonic  language,  and  if  we  printed  it 
Alphabetical  would  buy  a  hundred  copies  of  the 
paper  containing  it  and  send  them  East.  His 
office  desk  gradually  filled  with  woodcuts  and 
zinc  etchings  of  buildings  that  never  existed 
save  in  his  own  dear  old  head,  and  about  twice 
a  year  during  the  boom  days  he  would  bring 
them  around  and  have  a  circular  printed  on 
which  were  the  pictures  showing  the  imaginary 
public  buildings  and  theoretical  business  thor- 
oughfares of  the  Queen  City. 

The  woollen  mill  naturally  didn't  pay,  and 
he  persuaded  some  Eastern  capitalists  to  install 


i52  In  Our  Town 

an  electric  plant  in  the  building  and  put  a  street- 
car line  in  the  town,  though  the  longest  dis- 
tance from  one  side  of  the  place  to  the  other 
was  less  than  ten  blocks.  But  Alphabetical  was 
enthusiastic  about  it,  and  had  the  Governor 
come  down  to  drive  the  first  spike.  It  was  gold- 
plated,  and  Alphabetical  pulled  it  up  and  used 
it  for  a  paper-weight  in  his  office  for  many 
years,  and  it  is  now  the  only  reminder  there  is 
in  town  of  the  street  railway,  except  a  hard 
ridge  of  earth  over  the  ties  in  the  middle  of 
Main  Street.  When  someone  twitted  him  on 
the  failure  of  the  street  railway  he  made 
answer : 

"Of  course  it  failed;  here  I  go  pawing  up 
the  earth,  milking  out  the  surplus  capital  of  the 
effete  East,  and  building  up  this  town — and 
what  happens?  Four  thousand  old  silurian  fos- 
sils comb  the  moss  on  the  north  side  of  'em, 
with  mussel  shell,  and  turn  over  and  yawp  that 
old  Alphabetical  is  visionary.  Here  I  get  a  can- 
ning factory  and  nobody  eats  the  goods;  I  hus- 
tle up  a  woollen  factory,  and  the  community 
quits  wearing  trousers ;  I  build  for  them  a  street- 
car line  to  haul  them  to  and  from  their  palatial 


In  Our  Town  153 

residences,  and  what  do  the  sun-baked  human 
mud  turtles  do  but  all  jump  off  the  log  into  the 
water  and  hide  from  them  cars  like  they  were 
chariots  of  fire?  What  this  town  needs  is  not 
factories,  nor  railroads,  nor  modern  improve- 
ments— Old  Alphabetical  can  get  them — but 
the  next  great  scheme  I  go  into  is  to  go  down 
to  the  river,  get  some  good  red  mud,  and  make 
a  few  thousand  men  who  will  build  up  a  town." 
It  has  been  fifteen  years  and  over  since  Colo- 
nel Morrison  put  on  his  long  coat  and  high 
hat  and  started  for  the  money  markets  of  the 
East,  seeking  whom  he  might  devour.  At  the 
close  of  the  eighties  the  Colonel  and  all  his 
tribe  found  that  the  stock  of  Eastern  capitalists 
who  were  ready  to  pay  good  prices  for  the  fine 
shimmering  blue  sky  and  bracing  ozone  of  the 
West  was  running  low.  It  was  said  in  town  that 
the  Colonel  had  come  to  the  end  of  his  string, 
for  not  only  were  the  doors  of  capital  closed  to 
him  in  the  East,  but  newcomers  had  stopped 
looking  for  farms  at  home.  There  was  nothing 
to  do  but  to  sit  down  and  swap  jack-knives  with 
other  land  agents,  and  as  they  had  taken  most  of 
the  agencies  for  the  best  insurance  companies 


154  In  Our  Town 

while  the  Colonel  was  on  dress  parade,  there  was 
nothing  left  for  him  to  do  but  to  run  for  jus- 
tice of  the  peace,  and,  being  elected,  do  what 
he  could  to  make  his  tenure  for  life. 

Though  he  was  elected,  more  out  of  grati- 
tude for  what  he  had  tried  to  do  for  the  town 
than  because  people  thought  he  would  make  a 
fair  judge,  he  got  no  further  than  his  office  in 
popular  esteem.  He  did  not  seem  to  wear  well 
with  the  people  in  the  daily  run  and  jostle  of 
life.  During  the  forty  years  he  has  been  in 
our  town,  he  has  lived  most  of  the  time  apart 
from  the  people — transacting  his  business  in  the 
East,  or  locating  strangers  on  new  lands.  He 
has  not  been  one  of  us,  and  there  were  stories 
afloat  that  his  shrewdness  had  sometimes 
caused  him  to  thrust  a  toe  over  the  dead-line 
of  exact  honesty.  In  the  town  he  never  helped 
us  to  fight  for  those  things  of  which  the  town  is 
really  proud :  our  schools,  the  college,  the  munic- 
ipal ownership  of  electric  lights  and  water- 
works, the  public  library,  the  abolition  of  the 
saloon,  and  all  of  the  dozen  small  matters  of 
public  interest  in  which  good  citizens  take  a 
pride.  Colonel  Morrison  was  living  his  grand 


In  Our  Town  155 

life,  in  his  tailor-made  clothes,  while  his  towns- 
men were  out  with  their  coats  off  making  our 
town  the  substantial  place  it  is.  So  in  his  latter 
days  he  is  old  Alphabetical  Morrison,  a  man 
apart  from  us.  We  like  him  well  enough,  and  so 
long  as  he  cares  to  be  justice  of  the  peace  no 
one  will  object,  for  that  is  his  due.  But,  some- 
way, there  is  no  talk  of  making  him  County 
Clerk;  and  there  is  a  reason  in  everyone's  mind 
why  no  party  names  him  to  run  for  County 
Treasurer.  He  has  been  trying  hard  enough  for 
ten  years  to  break  through  the  crust  of  the  com- 
mon interests  that  he  has  so  long  ignored.  One 
sees  him  at  public  meetings — a  rather  wistful- 
looking,  chubby-faced  old  man — on  the  edge  of 
the  crowd,  ready  to  be  called  out  for  a  speech. 
But  no  one  calls  his  name;  no  one  cares  particu- 
larly what  old  Alphabetical  has  to  say.  Long 
ago  he  said  all  that  he  can  say  to  our  people. 

The  only  thing  that  Alphabetical  ever  organ- 
ised that  paid  was  a  family.  In  the  early  days 
he  managed  to  get  a  home  clear  of  indebtedness 
and  was  shrewd  enough  to  keep  it  out  of  all  of 
his  transactions.  Tow-headed  Morrisons  filled 
the  schoolhouse,  and  twenty  years  later  there 


i56  In  Our  Town 

were  so  many  of  his  girls  teaching  school  that 
the  school-board  had  to  make  a  ruling  limiting 
the  number  of  teachers  from  one  family  in  the 
city  school,  in  order  to  force  the  younger  Mor- 
rison girls  to  go  to  the  country  to  teach.  In  these 
days  the  girls  keep  the  house  going  and  Alpha- 
betical is  a  notary  public  and  a  justice  of  the 
peace,  which  keeps  his  office  going  in  the  little 
square  board  building  at  the  end  of  the  street. 
But  every  day  for  the  past  ten  years  he  has  been 
coming  to  our  office  for  his  bundle  of  old  news- 
papers. These  he  reads  carefully,  and  some- 
times what  he  reads  inspires  him  to  write  some- 
thing for  our  paper  on  the  future  of  the  Queen 
City,  though  much  oftener  his  articles  are  re- 
trospective. He  is  the  president  of  the  Old 
Settlers'  Society,  and  once  or  twice  a  year  he 
brings  in  an  obituary  which  he  has  written  for 
the  family  of  some  of  the  old-timers. 

One  would  think  that  an  idler  would  be  a 
nuisance  in  a  busy  place,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
we  all  like  old  Alphabetical  around  our  office. 
For  he  is  an  old  man  who  has  not  grown  sour. 
His  smooth,  fat  face  has  not  been  wrinkled  by 
the  vinegar  of  failure,  and  the  noise  that  came 


.22 

15 


T3 

i  = 

II 

1-S 


In  Our  Town  157 

from  his  lusty  lungs  in  the  old  days  is  subsiding. 
But  he  has  never  forgiven  General  Durham, 
of  the  Statesman,  for  saying  of  a  fight  between 
Alphabetical  and  another  land  agent  back  in 
the  sixties  that  "  those  who  heard  it  pronounced 
it  the  most  vocal  engagement  they  had  ever 
known."  That  is  why  he  brings  his  obituaries 
to  us ;  that  is  why  he  does  us  the  honour  of  bor- 
rowing papers  from  us;  and  that  is  why,  on  a 
dull  afternoon,  he  likes  to  sit  in  the  old  sway- 
back  swivel-chair  and  tell  us  his  theory  of  the 
increase  in  the  rainfall,  his  notion  about  the  in- 
fluence of  trees  upon  the  hot  winds,  his  opinion 
of  the  disappearance  of  the  grasshoppers.  Also, 
that  is  why  we  always  save  a  circus-ticket  for 
old  Alphabetical,  just  as  we  save  one  for  each 
of  the  boys  in  the  office. 

One  day  he  came  into  the  office  in  a  bad 
humour.  He  picked  up  a  country  paper,  glanced 
it  over,  threw  it  down,  kicked  from  under  his  feet 
a  dog  that  had  followed  a  subscriber  into  the 
room,  and  slammed  his  hat  into  the  waste- 
basket  with  considerable  feeling  as  he  picked 
up  a  New  York  paper. 

"  Well — well,    what's   the   matter   with    the 


*58  In  Our  Town 

judiciary  this  morning?"  someone  asked  the 
old  man. 

He  did  not  reply  at  once,  but  turned  his 
paper  over  and  over,  apparently  looking  for 
something  to  interest  him.  Gradually  the  revo- 
lutions of  his  paper  became  slower  and  slower, 
and  finally  he  stopped  turning  the  paper  and 
began  reading.  It  was  ten  or  fifteen  minutes 
before  he  spoke.  When  he  put  down  the  paper 
his  cherubic  face  was  beaming,  and  he  said: 

"  Oh — I  know  I'm  a  fool,  but  I  wish  the 
Lord  had  sent  me  to  live  in  a  town  large  enough 
so  that  every  dirty-faced  brat  on  the  street 
wouldn't  feel  he  had  a  right  to  call  me  *  Alpha- 
betical'!  Dammit,  I've  done  the  best  I  could  1 
I  haven't  made  any  alarming  success.  I  know 
it.  There's  no  need  of  rubbing  it  in  on  me." — 
He  was  silent  for  a  time  with  his  hands  on  his 
knees  and  his  head  thrown  back  looking  at  the 
ceiling.  Almost  imperceptibly  a  smile  began  to 
crack  his  features,  and,  when  he  turned  his  eyes 
to  the  man  at  the  desk,  they  were  dancing  with 
merriment,  as  he  said :  "  Just  been  reading  a 
piece  here  in  the  Sun  about  the  influence  of 
climate  on  human  endeavour.  It  says  that  in 


In  Our  Town  159 

northern  latitudes  there  is  more  oxygen  in  the 
air  and  folks  breathe  faster,  and  their  blood 
flows  faster,  and  that  keeps  their  livers  going. 
Trouble  with  me  has  always  been  climate — 
sluggish  liver.  If  I  had  had  just  a  little  more 
oxygen  floating  round  in  my  system,  the  woollen 
mill  would  still  be  running,  the  street-cars  would 
be  going,  and  this  town  would  have  had 
forty  thousand  inhabitants.  My  fatal  mistake 
was  one  of  latitude.  But " — and  he  drawled 
out  the  word  mockingly — "  but  I  guess  if  the 
Lord  had  wanted  me  to  make  a  town  here  he 
would  have  given  me  a  different  kind  of  liver  I'" 
He  slapped  his  knees  as  he  sighed:  "This  is 
a  funny  world,  and  the  more  you  see  of  it  the 
funnier  it  gets.'*  The  old  man  grinned  com- 
placently at  the  ceiling  for  a  minute,  and  before 
getting  out  of  his  chair  kicked  his  shoe-heels 
together  merrily,  wiped  his  glasses  as  he  rose, 
put  his  bundle  of  papers  under  his  arm,  and  left 
the  office  whistling  an  .old,  old-fashioned  tune. 


XI 


The  Casting  Out  of  Jimmy  Myers 

IT  seemed  a  cruel  thing  to  do,  but  we  had 
to  do  it.  For  ours  is  ordinarily  a  quiet 
office.  We  have  never  had  a  libel  suit.  We 
have  had  fewer  fights  than  most  newspaper 
offices  have,  and  while  it  hardly  may  be  said 
that  we  strive  to  please,  still  in  the  main  we  try 
to  get  on  with  the  people,  and  tell  them  as  much 
truth  as  they  are  entitled  to  for  ten  cents  a  week. 
Naturally,  we  do  our  best  to  get  up  a  sprightly 
paper,  and  in  that  the  Myers  boy  had  our  idea 
exactly.  He  was  industrious;  more  than  that, 
he  tried  with  all  his  might  to  exercise  his 
best  judgment,  and  no  one  could  say  that  he 
was  careless;  yet  everyone  around  the  office  ad- 
mitted that  he  was  unlucky.  He  was  one  of 
those  persons  who  always  have  slivers  on  their 
doors,  or  tar  on  the  knocker,  when  opportunity 
comes  their  way;  so  his  stay  in  the  office  was 

marked  by  a  series  of  seismic  disturbances  in 
160 


And  camped  in  the  office  for  two  days,  looking  for  Jimmy 


In   Our  Town  161 

the  paper  that  came  from  under  his  desk,  and 
yet  he  was  in  no  way  to  blame  for  them. 

We  took  him  from  the  college  at  the  edge 
of  town.  He  had  been  running  the  college 
paper  for  a  year,  and  knew  the  merchants 
around  town  fairly  well;  and,  since  he  was 
equipped  as  far  as  education  went,  he  seemed 
to  be  a  likely  sort  of  a  boy  for  reporter  and 
advertising  solicitor. 

One  of  the  first  things  that  happened  to  him 
was  a  mistake  in  an  item  about  the  opera  house. 
He  said  that  a  syndicate  had  taken  a  lien  on  it. 
What  he  meant  was  a  lease,  and  as  he  got  the 
item  from  a  man  who  didn't  know  the  differ- 
ence, and  as  the  boy  stuck  to  it  that  the  man  had 
said  lien  and  not  lease,  we  did  not  charge  that  up 
to  him.  A  few  days  later  he  wrote  for  a  town 
photographer  a  paid  local  criticising  someone 
who  was  going  around  the  county  peddling  pic- 
ture-frames and  taking  orders  for  enlarged  pic- 
tures. That  was  not  so  bad,  but  it  turned  out 
that  the  pedlar  was  a  woman,  and  she  came  with 
a  rawhide  and  camped  in  the  office  for  two  days 
waiting  for  Jimmy,  while  he  came  in  and  out  of 
the  back  door,  stuck  his  copy  on  the  hook  by 


162  In  Our  Town 

stealth,  and  travelled  only  in  the  alleys  to  get  his 
news.  One  could  hardly  say  that  he  was  to  blame 
for  that,  either,  as  the  photographer  who  paid 
for  the  item  didn't  say  the  pedlar  was  a  woman, 
and  the  boy  was  no  clairvoyant. 

One  dull  day  he  wrote  a  piece  about  the 
gang  who  played  poker  at  night  in  Red  Mar- 
tin's room.  Jimmy  said  he  wasn't  afraid  of 
Red,  and  he  wasn't.  The  item  was  popular 
enough,  and  led  to  a  raid  on  the  place,  which 
disclosed  our  best  advertiser  sitting  in  the  game. 
To  suppress  his  name  meant  our  shame  before 
the  town ;  to  print  it  meant  his — at  our  expense. 
It  was  embarrassing,  but  it  wasn't  exactly  the 
boy's  fault.  It  was  just  one  of  those  unfortunate 
circumstances  that  come  up  in  life.  However, 
the  advertiser  aforesaid  began  to  hate  the  boy. 

He  must  have  been  used  to  injustice  all  his 
life,  for  there  was  a  vertical  line  between  his 
eyes  that  marked  trouble.  The  line  deepened  as 
he  went  further  and  further  into  the  newspaper 
business;  for,  generally  speaking,  a  person  who 
is  unlucky  has  less  to  fear  handling  dynamite 
than  he  has  writing  local  items  on  a  country 
paper. 


In  Our  Town  163 

A  few  days  after  the  raid  on  the  poker-room 
Jimmy,  who  had  acquired  a  particularly  legible 
hand;  wrote:  "  The  hem  of  her  skirt  was  trim- 
med with  pink  crushed  roses,"  and  he  was  in  no 
way  to  blame  for  the  fact  that  the  printer  acci- 
dentally put  an  "  h  "  for  a  "  k  "  in  skirt,  though 
the  woman's  husband  chased  Jimmy  into  a  cul- 
vert under  Main  Street  and  kept  him  there  most 
of  the  forenoon,  while  the  cheering  crowd  in- 
formed the  injured  husband  whenever  Jimmy 
tried  to  get  out  of  either  end  of  his  prison. 

The  printer  that  made  the  mistake  bought 
Jimmy  a  new  suit  of  clothes,  we  managed  to 
print  an  apology  that  cooled  the  husband's 
wrath,  and  for  ten  days,  or  perhaps  two  weeks, 
the  boy's  life  was  one  round  of  joy.  Everything 
was  done  promptly,  accurately  and  with  re- 
markable intelligence.  He  whistled  at  his  work 
and  stacked  up  more  copy  than  the  printers 
could  set  up  in  type.  No  man  ever  got  in  or  out 
of  town  without  having  his  name  in  our  paper. 
Jimmy  wrote  up  a  railroad  bond  election  meeting 
so  fairly  that  he  pleased  both  sides,  and  reported 
a  murder  trial  so  well  that  the  lawyers  for  each 
side  kept  the  boy's  pockets  full  of  ten-cent 


164  In  Our  Town 

cigars.  The  vertical  wrinkle  was  fading  from 
hi*  forehead,  when  one  fine  summer  morning 
he  brought  in  a  paid  item  from  a  hardware  mer- 
chant, and  went  blithely  out  to  write  up  the 
funeral  of  the  wife  of  a  prominent  citizen.  He 
was  so  cheerful  that  day  that  it  bothered 
him. 

He  told  us  in  confidence  that  he  never  felt 
festive  and  gay  that  something  didn't  happen. 
He  was  not  in  the  building  that  evening  when 
the  paper  went  to  press,  but  after  it  was  printed 
and  the  carriers  had  left  the  office  he  came  in, 
singing  "  She's  My  Sweetheart,  I'm  Her 
Beau,"  and  sat  down  to  read  the  paper. 

Suddenly  the  smile  on  his  face  withered  as 
with  frost,  and  he  handed  the  paper  across  the 
table  to  the  bookkeeper,  who  read  this  item: 

DIED MRS.    LILLIAN   GILSEY. 

Prepare  for  the  hot  weather,  my  good  woman.  There 
is  only  one  way  now;  get  a  gasoline  stove,  of  Hurley 
&  Co.,  and  you  need  not  fear  any  future  heat. 

And  it  wasn't  Jimmy's  fault.  The  foreman 
had  merely  misplaced  a  head  line,  but  that  ex- 
planation did  not  satisfy  the  bereaved  family. 


In  Our  Town  165 

Jimmy  was  beginning  to  acquire  a  reputation 
as  a  joker.  People  refused  to  believe  that  such 
things  just  happened.  They  did  not  happen  be- 
fore Mr.  James  Myers  came  to  the  paper — why 
should  they  begin  with  his  coming  and  continue 
during  his  engagement?  Thus  reasoned  the 
comforters  of  the  Gilseys,  and  those  interested 
in  our  downfall.  The  next  day  the  Statesman 
wrote  a  burning  editorial  denouncing  us  "  for 
an  utter  lack  of  all  sense  of  common  decency  " 
that  permitted  us  "  to  violate  the  sacredest  feel- 
ing known  to  the  human  heart  for  the  sake  of 
getting  a  ribald  laugh  from  the  unthinking." 
We  were  two  weeks  explaining  that  the  error 
was  not  the  boy's  fault.  People  assumed  that 
the  mistake  could  not  have  occurred  in  any  well- 
regulated  printing  office,  and  it  didn't  seem 
probable  that  it  could  occur — yet  there  it  was. 
But  Jimmy  wasn't  to  blame.  He  suffered  more 
than  we  did — more  than  the  bereaved  family 
did.  He  went  unshaven  and  forgot  to  trim  his 
cuffs  or  turn  his  collar.  He  hated  to  go  on  the 
streets  for  news,  and  covered  with  the  office 
telephone  as  much  of  his  beat  as  possible. 

The  summer  wore  away  and  the  dog  days 


1 66  In  Our  Town 

came.  The  Democratic  State  campaign  was 
about  to  open  in  our  town,  and  orators  and 
statesmen  assembled  from  all  over  the  Missouri 
valley.  There  was  a  lack  of  flags  at  the  dry- 
goods  stores.  The  Fourth  of  July  celebration 
had  taken  all  the  stock.  The  only  materials  avail- 
able were  some  red  bunting,  some  white  bunt- 
ing, and  some  blue  bunting  with  stars  dotted 
upon  it.  With  this  bunting  the  Committee  on 
Reception  covered  the  speakers'  stand,  wrapping 
the  canopy  under  which  the  orators  stood  in  the 
solid  colours  and  the  star-spangled  blue.  It  was 
beautiful  to  see,  and  the  pride  of  the  window- 
dresser  of  the  Golden  Eagle  Clothing  Store. 
But  the  old  soldiers  who  walked  by  nudged  one 
another  and  smiled. 

About  noon  of  the  day  of  the  speaking  the 
City  Clerk,  who  wore  the  little  bronze  button  of 
the  G.  A.  R.,  asked  Jimmy  if  he  didn't  want 
someone  to  take  care  of  the  Democratic  meeting. 
Jimmy,  who  hated  politics,  was  running  his  legs 
off  to  get  the  names  of  the  visitors,  and  was 
glad  to  have  the  help.  He  turned  in  the  contrib- 
uted copy  without  reading  it,  as  he  had  done 
with  the  City  Clerk's  articles  many  times  be- 


In  Our  Town  167 

fore,  and  this  is  what  greeted  his  horrified  eyes 
when  he  read  the  paper: 


Democracy  Opens  Its  State  Campaign  Under  the 
Rebel  Emblem  To-day 

A  Fitting  Token 
Treasonable  Utterances  Have  a  Proper  Setting 

And  then  followed  half  a  column  of  most 
violent  abuse  of  the  Democrats  who  had  charge 
of  the  affair.  Jimmy  did  not  appear  on  the  street 
that  night,  but  the  next  morning,  when  he  came 
down,  the  office  was  crowded  with  indignant 
Democrats  "  stopping  the  paper." 

We  began  to  feel  uneasy  about  Jimmy.  So 
long  as  his  face  was  in  the  eclipse  of  grief  there 
seemed  to  be  a  probability  that  we  would  have 
no  trouble,  but  as  soon  as  his  moon  began  to 
shine  we  were  nervous. 

Jimmy  had  a  peculiar  knack  of  getting  up 
little  stories  of  the  town — not  exactly  news 
stories,  but  little  odd  bits  that  made  people 
smile  without  rancour  when  they  saw  their 
names  in  the  quaintly  turned  items.  One  day 
he  wrote  up  a  story  of  a  little  boy  whose 


1 68  In  Our  Town 

mother  asked  him  where  he  got  a  dollar  that  he 
was  flourishing  on  his  return  with  his  father 
from  a  visit  in  Kansas  City.  The  little  boy's 
answer  was  that  his  father  gave  it  to  him  for 
calling  him  uncle  when  any  ladies  were  around. 
It  was  merrily  spun,  and  knowing  that  it  would 
not  make  John  Lusk,  the  boy's  father,  mad, 
we  printed  it,  and  Jimmy  put  at  the  head  of 
it  a  foolish  little  verse  of  Kipling's.  Miss 
Larrabee,  at  the  bottom  of  her  society  col- 
umn, announced  the  engagement  of  two  promi- 
nent young  people  in  town.  The  Saturday  pa- 
per was  unusually  readable.  But  when  Jimmy 
came  in  after  the  paper  was  out  he  found  Miss 
Larrabee  in  tears,  and  the  foreman  leaning  over 
the  counter  laughing  so  that  he  couldn't  speak. 
It  wasn't  Jimmy's  fault.  The  foreman  had 
done  it — by  the  mere  transposition  of  a  little 
brass  rule  separating  the  society  news  from 
Jimmy's  story  with  the  Kipling  verse  at  the 
head  of  it.  The  rule  tacked  the  Kipling  verse 
onto  Miss  Larrabee's  article  announcing  the  en- 
gagement. Here  is  the  way  it  read: 

"  This  marriage,  which  will  take  place  at  St. 
Andrew's  Church,  will  unite  two  of  the  most 


In  Our  Town  169 

popular  people  in  town  and  two  of  the  best- 
known  families  in  the  State. 

"And  this  is  the  sorrowful  story 

Told  as  the  twilight  fails, 
While  the  monkeys  are  walking  together. 
Holding  each  other's  tails!" 

Now,  Jimmy  was  no  more  to  blame  than 
Miss  Larrabee,  and  many  people  thought,  and 
think  to  this  day,  that  Miss  Larrabee  did  it — 
and  did  it  on  purpose.  But  for  all  that  it  cast 
clouds  over  the  moon  of  Jimmy's  countenance, 
and  it  was  nearly  a  year  before  he  regained  his 
merry  heart.  He  was  nervous,  and  whenever 
he  saw  a  man  coming  toward  the  office  with  a 
paper  in  his  hand  Jimmy  would  dash  out  of 
the  room  to  avoid  the  meeting.  For  an  hour 
after  the  paper  was  out  the  ringing  of  the  tele- 
phone bell  would  make  him  start.  He  didn't 
know  what  was  going  to  happen  next. 

But  as  the  months  rolled  by  he  became  calm, 
and  when  Governor  Antrobus  died,  Jimmy  got 
up  a  remarkably  good  story  of  his  life  and 
achievements,  and  though  there  was  no  family 
left  to  the  dear  old  man  to  buy  extra  copies, 
all  the  old  settlers — who  are  the  hardest  peo- 


17°  In  Our  Town 

pie  in  the  world  to  please — bought  extra  copies 
for  their  scrapbooks.  We  were  proud  of 
Jimmy,  and  assigned  him  to  write  up  the  fu- 
neral. That  was  to  be  a  "  day  of  triumph  in 
Capua."  There  being  no  relatives  to  interfere, 
the  lodges  of  the  town — and  the  Governor  was 
known  as  a  "  jiner  " — had  vied  with  one  an- 
other to  make  the  funeral  the  greatest  rooster- 
feather  show  ever  given  in  the  State.  The 
whole  town  turned  out,  and  the  foreman  of  our 
office,  and  everyone  in  the  back  room  who 
could  be  spared,  was  at  the  Governor's  funeral, 
wearing  a  plume,  a  tin  sword,  a  red  leather  belt, 
or  a  sash  of  some  kind.  We  put  a  tramp  printer 
on  to  make  up  the  paper,  and  told  Jimmy  to  call 
by  the  undertaker's  for  a  paid  local  which  the 
undertaker  had  written  for  the  paper  that  day. 
Jimmy's  face  was  beaming  as  he  snuggled  up 
to  his  desk  at  three  o'clock  that  afternoon.  He 
said  he  had  a  great  story — names  of  the  pall- 
bearers, names  of  the  double  sextette  choir, 
names  of  all  the  chaplains  of  all  the  lodges  who 
read  their  rituals,  names  of  distinguished  guests 
from  abroad,  names  of  the  ushers  at  the  church. 
Page  by  page  he  tore  off  his  copy  and  gave  it 


In  Our  Town  171 

to  the  tramp  printer,  who  took  it  in  to  the  ma- 
chines. Trusting  the  foreman  to  read  the 
proof,  Jimmie  rushed  out  to  get  from  a  United 
States  Senator  who  was  attending  the  funeral  an 
interview  on  the  sugar  scandal,  for  the  Kansas 
City  Star. 

The  rest  of  us  did  not  get  back  from  the 
cemetery  until  the  carriers  had  left  the  office, 
and  this  is  what  we  found : 

>l  The  solemn  moan  of  the  organ  had  scarcely 
died  away,  like  a  quivering  sob  upon  the  fra- 
grant air,  when  the  mournful  procession  of  citi- 
zens began  filing  past  the  flower-laden  bier  to 
view  the  calm  face  of  their  beloved  friend  and 
honoured  townsman.  In  the  grief-stricken  hush 
that  followed  might  be  heard  the  stifled  grief  of 
some  old  comrade  as  he  paused  for  the  last  time 
before  the  coffin. 

"  At  this  particular  time  we  desire  to  call  the 
attention  of  our  readers  to  the  admirable  work 
done  by  our  hustling  young  undertaker,  J.  B. 
Morgan.  He  has  been  in  the  city  but  a  short 
time,  yet  by  his  efficient  work  and  careful  atten- 
tion to  duty,  he  has  built  up  an  enviable  reputa- 
tion and  an  excellent  custom  among  the  best 


In  Our  Town 

families  of  the  city.  All  work  done  with  neat- 
ness and  dispatch.  We  strive  to  please. 

"  When  the  last  sad  mourner  had  filed  out, 
the  pall-bearers  took  up  their  sorrowful  task,  and 
slowly,  as  the  band  played  the  '  Dead  March  in 
Saul/  the  great  throng  assembled  in  the  street 
viewed  the  mortal  remains  of  Governor  Antro- 
bus  start  on  their  last  long  journey." 

Of  course  it  wasn't  Jimmy's  fault.  The  "  ris- 
ing young  undertaker "  had  paid  the  tramp 
printer,  who  made  up  the  forms,  five  dollars 
to  work  his  paid  local  into  the  funeral  notice. 
But  after  that — Jimmy  had  to  go.  Public  sen- 
timent would  no  longer  stand  him  as  a  reporter 
on  the  paper,  and  we  gave  him  a  good  letter 
and  sent  him  onward  and  upward.  He  took  his 
dismissal  decently  enough.  He  realised  that  his 
luck  was  against  him;  he  knew  that  we  had 
borne  with  him  in  all  patience. 

The  day  that  he  left  he  was  instructing  the 
new  man  in  the  ways  of  the  town.  Reverend 
Frank  Milligan  came  in  with  a  church  notice. 
Jimmy  took  the  notice  and  began  marking  it  for 
the  printer.  As  the  door  behind  him  opened  and 
closed,  Jimmy,  with  his  head  still  in  his  work, 


Reverend  Milligan  came  in  with  a  church  notice 


In  Our  Town  173 

called  across  the  room  to  the  new  man :  "  That 
was  old  Milligan  that  just  went  out — beware  of 
him.  He  will  load  you  up  with  truck  about 
himself.  He  rings  in  his  sermons;  trots  around 
with  church  social  notices  that  ought  to  be  paid 
for,  and  tries  to  get  them  in  free;  likes  to  be 
referred  to  as  doctor;  slips  in  mean  items  about 
his  congregation,  if  you  don't  watch  him;  and 
insists  on  talking  religion  Saturday  morning 
when  you  are  too  busy  to  spit.  More  than  that, 
he  has  an  awful  breath — cut  him  out;  he  will 
make  life  a  burden  if  you  don't — and  if  you  do 
he  will  go  to  the  old  man  with  it,  and  say  you 
are  not  treating  him  right." 

There  was  a  rattling  and  a  scratching  on  the 
wire  partition  between  Jimmy  and  the  door. 
Jimmy  looked  up  from  his  work  and  saw  the 
sprightly  little  figure  of  Parson  Milligan  com- 
ing over  the  railing  like  a  monkey.  He  had  not 
gone  out  of  the  door — a  printer  had  come  in 
when  it  opened  and  shut.  And  then  Jimmy  took 
his  last  flying  trip  out  of  the  back  door  of  the 
office,  down  the  alley,  u  toward  the  sunset's  pur- 
ple rim."  It  was  not  his  fault.  He  was  only  tell- 
ing the  truth — where  it  would  do  the  most  good. 


XII 
"'A  Babbled  of  Green  Fields" 

OUR  town  is  set  upon  a  hillside,  rising 
from  a  prairie  stream.  Forty  years 
ago  the  stream  ran  through  a  thick 
woodland  nearly  a  mile  wide,  and  in  the  wood- 
land were  stately  elms,  spreading  walnut  trees, 
shapely  oaks,  gaunt  white  sycamores,  and 
straight,  bushy  hackberries,  that  shook  their 
fruit  upon  the  ice  in  spots  least  frequented  by 
skaters.  Along  the  draws  that  emptied  into  the 
stream  were  pawpaw  trees,  with  their  tender 
foliage,  and  their  soft  wood,  which  little  boys 
delighted  to  cut  for  stick  horses.  Beneath  all 
these  trees  grew  a  dense  underbrush  of  buck- 
eyes, blackberries,  raspberries,  gooseberries, 
and  little  red  winter  berries  called  Indian  beads 
by  the  children.  Wild  grapevines,  "  poison  " 
grapes,  and  ivies  of  both  kinds  wove  the  woods 
into  a  mass  of  summer  green.  In  the  clearings 
and  bordering  the  wood  grew  the  sumach,  that 
J74 


In  Our  Town  175 

flared  red  at  the  very  thought  of  Jack  Frost's 
coming.  In  these  woods  the  boys  of  our  town — 
many  of  whom  have  been  dead  these  twenty 
years — used  to  lay  their  traps  for  the  monsters 
of  the  forest,  and  trudged  back  from  the  timber 
before  breakfast,  in  winter,  bringing  home  red- 
birds,  and  rabbits  and  squirrels.  Sometimes  a 
particularly  doughty  woodsman  would  report 
that  there  were  wildcat  tracks  about  his  trap; 
but  none  of  us  ever  saw  a  wildcat,  though  Enoch 
Haver,  whose  father's  father  had  heard  a  wild- 
cat scream,  and  had  taught  the  boy  its  cry,  would 
hide  in  a  hollow  sycamore  and  screech  until  the 
little  boys  were  terrified  and  would  not  go  alone 
to  their  traps  for  days.  In  summer,  boys,  us- 
ually from  the  country,  or  from  a  neighbouring 
town,  caught  'coons,  and  dragged  them  chained 
through  alleys  for  our  boys  to  see,  and  'Dory 
Paine  had  an  owl  which  was  widely  sought  by 
other  boys  in  the  circus  and  menagerie  line. 
The  boys  of  our  town  in  that  day  seemed  to  live 
in  the  wood  and  around  the  long  millpond, 
though  little  fellows  were  afraid  that  lurking  In- 
dians or  camping  gypsies  might  steal  them — a 
boy's  superstition,  which  experience  has  proved 


In  Our  Town 

too  good  to  be  true.  They  fared  forth  to 
the  riffle  below  the  dam,  which  deepens  in  the 
shade  under  the  water  elm;  this  was  the  pool 
known  as  "  baby  hole,"  despised  of  the  ten-year- 
olds,  who  plunged  into  the  deepest  of  the  thicket 
and  came  out  at  the  limekiln,  where  all  day  long 
one  might  hear  "  so-deep,  so-deep,  so-deep," 
and  "  go-round,  go-round,  go-round,"  until 
school  commenced  in  the  fall.  Then  the  rattle  of 
little  homemade  wagons,  and  the  shrilling  of 
boy  voices  might  be  heard  all  over  the  wilder- 
ness, and  the  black-stained  hands  of  schoolboys 
told  of  the  day  of  the  walnut  harvest.  It  was 
nearly  a  mile  from  the  schoolhouse  to  the 
woods,  and  yet  on  winter  afternoons  no  school- 
ma'am  could  keep  the  boys  from  using  school 
hours  to  dig  out  the  screw-holes  and  heel-plates 
of  their  boots  before  wadding  them  with  paper. 
At  four  o'clock  a  troop  of  boys  would  burst 
forth  from  that  schoolhouse  so  wildly  that  Gen- 
eral Durham  of  the  Statesman,  whose  office  we 
used  to  pass  with  a  roar,  always  looked  up 
from  his  work  to  say:  "Well,  I  see  helFs  out 
for  noon  again." 

In  the  spring  the  boys  fished,  and  on  Satur- 


In  Our  Town  177 

days  go,  up  the  river  or  down,  or  on  either  side, 
where  one  would,  one  was  never  out  of  sight  of 
some  thoughtful  boy,  sitting  either  on  a  stump 
or  on  a  log  stretching  into  the  stream,  or 
squatting  on  a  muddy  bank  with  his  worm  can 
beside  him,  throwing  a  line  into  the  deep,  green, 
quiet  water.  Always  it  was  to  the  woods  one 
went  to  find  a  lost  boy,  for  the  brush  was  alive 
with  fierce  pirates,  and  blood-bound  brother- 
hoods, and  gory  Indian  fighters,  and  dauntless 
scouts.  Under  the  red  clay  banks  that  rose 
above  the  sluggish  stream,  robbers'  caves,  and 
treasure  houses,  and  freebooters1  dens,  were 
filled  with  boys  who,  five  days  in  the  week  and 
six  hours  a  day,  could  "  amo  amas  amat, 
amamus  amatus  amant "  with  the  best  of  them. 
On  Sundays  these  same  boys  sat  with  trousers 
creeping  above  the  wrinkles  at  the  ankles  of 
their  copper-toed,  red-topped  boots,  recited 
golden  texts,  sang  "  When  He  Cometh,"  and 
while  planning  worse  for  their  own  little 
brothers,  read  with  much  virtuous  indignation 
of  little  Joseph's  wicked  brothers,  who  put  him 
in  a  pit.  After  Sunday  School  was  over  these 
highly  respected  young  persons  walked  sedately 


178  In  Our  Town 

in  their  best  clothes  over  the  scenes  of  their  Sat- 
urday crimes. 

They  say  the  woods  are  gone  now.  Certainly 
the  trees  have  been  cut  away  and  the  under- 
brush burned;  cornfields  cover  the  former 
scenes  of  valorous  achievement;  but  none  the 
less  the  woods  are  there ;  each  nook  and  cranny 
is  as  it  was,  despite  the  cornfields.  Scattered 
about  the  sad  old  earth  live  men  who  could 
walk  blindfolded  over  the  dam,  across  the  mill- 
race,  around  the  bend,  through  the  pawpaw 
patch  to  the  grapevine  home  of  the  "  Slaves 
of  the  Magic  Tree;  "  who  could  find  their  trail 
under  the  elder  bushes  in  Boswell's  ravine, 
though  they  should  come — as  they  often  come — 
at  the  dead  of  night  from  great  cities  and  from 
mountain  camps  and  from  across  seas,  and  fore- 
gather there,  in  the  smoke  and  dirt  of  the  ren- 
dezvous to  eat  their  unsalted  sacrificial  rabbit. 
They  can  follow  the  circuitous  route  around 
John  Betts's  hog  lot,  to  avoid  the  enemy,  as 
easily  to-day  as  they  could  before  the  axe  and 
the  fire  and  the  plough  made  their  fine  pre- 
tence of  changing  the  landscape.  And  when 
Joe  Nevison  gets  ready  to  signal  them  from  his 


In  Our  Town  179 

seat  high  in  the  crotch  of  the  oak  tree  across 
the  creek,  the  "  Slaves  of  the  Tree  "  will  come 
and  obey  their  leader.  They  say  that  the  tree  is 
gone,  and  that  Joe  is  gone,  but  we  know  bet- 
ter; for  at  night,  when  the  Tree  has  called  us, 
and  we  hear  the  notes  from  the  pumpkin-stem 
reed,  we  come  and  sit  in  the  branches  beneath 
him  and  plan  our  raids  and  learn  our  passwords, 
and  swear  our  vengeance  upon  such  as  cross  our 
pathway.  There  may  have  been  a  time  when 
men  thought  the  Slaves  of  the  Tree  were 
disbanded;  indeed  it  did  seem  so,  but  as  the 
years  go  by,  one  by  one  they  come  wandering 
back,  take  their  places  in  the  branches  of  the 
magic  tree,  swing  far  out  over  the  world  like 
birds,  and  summon  again  the  genius  loci  who  has 
slept  for  nearly  forty  years. 

Of  course  we  knew  that  Joe  would  be  the  first 
one  back;  he  didn't  care  what  they  said — even 
then;  he  registered  his  oath  that  it  made  no  dif- 
ference what  they  did  to  him  or  what  the  others 
did,  he  would  never  desert  the  Tree.  He  com- 
manded all  of  us  to  come  back;  if  not  by  day 
then  to  gather  in  the  moonlight  and  bring  our 
chicken  for  the  altar  and  our  eggs  for  the  cere- 


180  In  Our  Town 

mony,  and  he  promised  that  he  would  be  there. 
We  were  years  and  years  in  obeying  Joe  Nevi- 
son.  Many  of  us  have  had  long  journeys  to  go; 
and  some  of  us  lead  little  children  by  the  hand 
as  we  creep  up  the  hollow,  crawl  through  the 
gooseberry  bushes,  and  'coon  the  log  over  the 
chasm  to  our  meeting  place.  But  we  are  nearly 
all  there  now;  and  in  the  moonlight,  when  the 
corn  seems  to  be  waving  over  a  wide  field,  a 
tree  springs  up  as  by  magic  and  we  take  our 
places  again  as  of  old. 

Many  years  have  passed  since  Marshal 
Furgeson  stood  those  seven  Slaves  of  the  Magic 
Tree  in  line  before  the  calaboose  door  and 
made  them  surrender  the  feathered  cork  apple- 
stealers  and  the  sacred  chicken  hooks.  In  those 
years  many  terrors  have  ridden  the  boys  who 
have  gone  out  into  the  world  to  fight  its  dra- 
gons and  grapple  with  its  gorgons;  but  never 
have  those  boys  felt  any  happiness  so  sweet 
as  that  which  rested  on  their  hearts  when 
they  heard  the  Marshal  say,  "  Now  you  boys 

run  on  home — but  mind  you  if  I  ever " 

and  he  never  did — except  Joe  Nevison.  Once 
it  was  for  boring  a  hole  in  the  depot  platform 


In  Our  Town  181 

and  tapping  a  barrel  of  cider;  once  it  was  for 
going  through  a  window  in  the  Hustler  hard- 
ware store  and  taking  a  box  of  pocketknives 
and  two  revolvers,  with  which  to  reward  his 
gang,  and  finally,  when  the  boy  was  in  the  midst 
of  his  teens,  for  breaking  into  the  schoolhouse 
and  burning  the  books.  Joe's  father  always 
bought  him  off,  as  fathers  always  can  buy  boys 
off,  when  mothers  go  to  the  offended  person 
and  promise,  and  beg,  and  weep.  So  Joe  Nevison 
grew  up  the  town  bad  boy — defiant  of  law,  reck- 
less and  unrestrained,  with  the  blood  of  border 
ruffianism  in  his  veins  and  the  scorn  of  God  and 
man  and  the  love  of  sin  in  his  heart.  The  week 
after  he  left  town,  and  before  he  was  twenty, 
his  father  paid  for  "  Red  "  Martin's  grey  race 
horse,  which  disappeared  the  night  Joe's  bed 
was  found  empty.  In  those  days  the  Nevisons 
had  more  money  than  most  of  the  people  in  our 
town,  but  as  the  years  went  by  they  began  to 
lose  their  property,  and  it  was  said  that  it  went 
in  great  slices  to  Joe,  to  keep  him  out  of  the 
penitentiary. 

We  knew  that  Joe  Nevison  was  in  the  West. 
People  from  our  town,  who  seem  to  swarm  over 


1 82  In  Our  Town 

the  earth,  wrote  back  that  they  had  met  Joe 
in  Dodge  City,  in  Leoti,  in  No-Man's-Land,  in 
Texas,  in  Arizona — wherever  there  was  trou- 
ble. Sometimes  he  was  the  hired  bad  man  of  a 
desert  town,  whose  business  it  was  to  shoot 
terror  into  the  hearts  of  disturbers  from  rival 
towns;  sometimes  he  was  a  free  lance — living 
the  devil  knows  how — always  dressed  like  a 
fashion-plate  of  the  plains  in  high-heeled  boots, 
wide  felt  hat,  flowing  necktie,  flannel  shirt  and 
velvet  trousers.  They  say  that  he  did  not  gamble 
more  than  was  common  among  the  sporting  men 
of  his  class,  and  that  he  never  worked.  Some- 
times we  heard  of  him  adventuring  as  a  land 
dealer,  sometimes  as  a  cattleman,  sometimes  as 
a  mining  promoter,  sometimes  as  a  horseman, 
but  always  as  the  sharper,  who  rides  on  the  crest 
of  the  forward  wave  of  civilization,  leaving  a 
town  when  it  tears  down  its  tents  and  puts  up 
brick  buildings,  and  then  appearing  in  the  next 
canvas  community,  wherein  the  night  is  filled 
with  music,  and  the  cares  that  infest  the  day 
are  drowned  in  bad  whiskey  or  winked  out 
with  powder  and  shot.  And  thus  Joe  Nevison 
closed  his  twenties — a  desert  scorpion,  outcast 


A  desert  Scorpion,  outcast  by  society  and  proud  of  it 


In  Our  Town  183 

by  society  and  proud  of  it.  As  he  passed  into 
his  thirties  he  left  the  smoky  human  crystals 
that  formed  on  the  cow  trails  and  at  the 
mountain  gold  camps.  Cripple  Creek  became 
too  effete  for  him,  and  an  electric  light  in  a  tent 
became  a  target  he  could  not  resist;  wherefore 
he  went  into  the  sage  brush  and  the  short  grass, 
seeking  others  of  his  kind,  the  human  rattle- 
snake, the  ranging  coyote  and  the  outlawed 
wolf.  Joe  Nevison  rode  with  the  Dalton  gang, 
raided  ranches  and  robbed  banks  with  the  Mc- 
Whorters  and  held  up  stages  as  a  lone  highway- 
man. At  least,  so  men  said  in  the  West,  though 
no  one  could  prove  it,  and  at  the  opening  of 
Lawton  he  appeared  at  the  head  of  a  band  of 
cutthroats,  who  were  herded  out  of  town  by  the 
deputy  United  States  marshals  before  noon  of 
the  first  day.  Not  until  popular  government 
was  established  could  they  get  in  to  open  their 
skin-game,  which  was  better  and  safer  for  them 
than  ordinary  highway  faring.  At  Lawton  our 
people  saw  Joe  and  he  asked  about  the  home 
people,  asked  about  the  boys — the  old  boys  he 
called  them — and  becoming  possessed  of  a  post- 
office  address,  Joe  wrote  a  long  letter  to  George 


184  In  Our  Town 

Kirwin,  the  foreman  of  our  office.  We  call  him 
old  George,  because  he  is  still  under  forty.  Joe 
being  in  an  expansive  mood,  and  with  more 
money  on  his  clothes  than  he  cared  for,  sent  old 
George  ten  dollars  to  pay  for  a  dollar  Joe  had 
borrowed  the  day  he  left  town  in  the  eighties. 
We  printed  Joe's  letter  in  our  paper,  and  it 
pleased  his  mother.  That  was  the  beginning  of 
a  regular  correspondence  between  the  rover  and 
the  home-stayer.  George  Kirwin,  gaunt,  taci- 
turn, and  hard-working,  had  grown  out  of  the 
dreamy,  story-loving  boy  who  had  been  one  of 
the  Slaves  of  the  Magic  Tree  and  into  a  shy  old 
bachelor  who  wept  over  "  East  Lynne  "  when- 
ever it  came  to  the  town  opera  house,  and  asked 
for  a  lay-off  only  when  Modjeska  appeared  in 
Topeka,  or  when  there  was  grand  opera  at  Kan- 
sas City.  But  he  ruled  the  back  office  with  an 
iron  hand  and  superintended  the  Mission  Sun- 
day-School across  the  track,  putting  all  his  spare 
money  into  Christmas  presents  for  his  pupils. 
After  that  first  letter  that  came  from  Joe  Nevi- 
son,  no  one  had  a  hint  of  what  passed  between 
the  two  men.  But  a  month  never  went  by  that 
Joe's  letter  missed.  When  Lawton  began  to 


In  Our  Town  185 

wane,  Joe  Nevison  seemed  to  mend  his  way- 
ward course.  He  moved  to  South  McAlester 
and  opened  a  faro  game — a  square  game  they 
said  it  was — for  the  Territory !  This  meant  that 
unless  Joe  was  hard  up  every  man  had  his 
chance  before  the  wheel.  Old  George  took  the 
longest  trip  of  his  life,  when  we  got  him  a  pass 
to  South  McAlester  and  he  put  on  his  black 
frock  coat  and  went  to  visit  Joe.  All  that  we 
learned  from  him  was  that  Joe  "  had  changed  a 
good  deal,"  and  that  he  was  "  taking  every- 
thing in  the  drug  store,  from  the  big  green  bot- 
tle at  the  right  of  the  front  door  clear  around 
past  the  red  prescription  case,  and  back  to  the 
big  blue  bottle  at  the  left  of  the  door."  But 
after  George  came  home  the  Mission  Sunday- 
School  began  to  thrive.  George  was  not  afraid 
of  tainted  money,  and  the  school  got  a  new 
library,  which  included  "  Tom  Sawyer "  and 
"  Huckleberry  Finn,"  as  well  as  "  Hans  Brinker 
and  the  Silver  Skates  "  for  the  boys,  and  all  the 
"  Pansy  "  books  for  the  girls.  It  was  a  quaint 
old  lot  of  books,  and  George  Kirwin  was  nearly 
a  year  getting  it  together.  Also  he  bought  a 
new  stove  for  his  Sunday-School  room,  and  a  lot 


1 86  In  Our  Town 

of  pictures  for  the  church  walls,  among  others 
"  Wide  Awake  and  Fast  Asleep,"  "  Simply  to 
Thy  Cross,"  and  "The  Old  Oaken  Bucket." 
He  gave  to  the  school  a  cabinet  organ  with  more 
stops  than  most  of  the  children  could  count. 

A  year  ago  a  new  reporter  brought  in  this 
item:  "  Joseph  Nevison,  of  South  McAlester, 
I.  T.,  is  visiting  his  mother,  Mrs.  Julia  Nevi- 
son, at  234  South  Fifth  Street." 

We  sent  the  reporter  out  for  more  about  Joe 
Nevison  and  at  noon  George  Kirwin  hurried 
down  to  the  little  home  below  the  tracks.  From 
these  two  searchers  after  truth  we  learned  that 
Joe  Nevison's  mother  had  brought  him  home 
from  the  Indian  Territory  mortally  sick.  Half- 
a-dozen  of  us  who  had  played  with  him  as  boys 
went  to  see  him  that  evening,  and  found  a  wan, 
haggard  man  with  burned-out  black  eyes,  lying 
in  a  clean  white  bed.  He  seemed  to  know  each 
of  us  for  a  moment  and  spoke  to  us  through  his 
delirium  in  a  tired,  piping  voice — like  the  voice 
of  the  little  boy  who  had  been  our  leader.  He 
called  us  by  forgotten  nicknames,  and  he 
hummed  at  a  tune  that  we  had  not  heard  for  a 
score  of  years.  Then  he  piped  out  "  While  the 


In  Our  Town  187 

Landlubbers  Lie  Down  Below,  Below,  Below," 
and  followed  that  with  "  Green  Grass  Growing 
all  Around,  all  Around,"  and  that  with  the  song 
about  the  "  Tonga  Islands,"  his  voice  growing 
into  a  clearer  alto  as  he  sang.  His  mother  tried 
to  quiet  him,  but  he  smiled  his  dead  smile  at  her 
through  his  cindery  eyes,  shook  his  head  and 
went  on.  When  he  had  lain  quiet  for  a  moment, 
he  turned  to  one  of  us  and  said:  "  Dock,  I'm 
goin'  up  and  dive  off  that  stump — a  back  flip- 
flop — you  dassent!  "  Pretty  soon  he  seemed  to 
come  up  snuffing  and  blowing  and  grinning  and 
said,  "  Last  man  dressed  got  to  chaw  beef." 
Then  he  cried:  "Dock's  it — Dock's  it;  catch 
'im,  hold  him — there  he  goes — duck  him,  strip 
him.  O  well,  let  him  go  if  he's  go'n'  to  cry. 
Say,  boys,  I  wish  you  fellers'd  come  over  t'  my 
stick  horse  livery  stable — honest  I  got  the  best 
hickory  horse  you  ever  see.  Whoa,  there — whoa 
now,  I  tell  you.  You  Pilliken  Dunlevy  let  me 
harness  you;  there,  put  it  under  yaur  arm,  and 
back  of  your  neck — no  I  ain't  go'n'  to  let  you 
hold  it — I'll  jerk  the  tar  out  of  you  if  you  don't 
go.  Whe-e-e  that's  the  way  to  go,  hoi — hold  on, 
whoa  there.  Back  up.  Let's  go  over  to  Jim's 


1 88  In  Our  Town 

and  run  on  his  track.  Say,  Jim,  I  got  the  best 
little  pacer  in  the  country  here — get  up  there, 
Pilliken,"  and  he  clucked  and  sawed  his  arms, 
and  cracked  an  imaginary  whip.  When  George 
came  in,  the  face  on  the  bed  brightened  and  the 
treble  voice  said:  "Hello  Fatty — weVe  been 
waitin'  for  you.  Now  let's  go  on.  What  you 
got  in  your  wagon — humph — bet  it's  a  pump- 
kin. Did  old  Boswell  chase  you  ?  "  and  then  he 
laughed,  and  turned  away  from  us.  His  trem- 
bling hands  seemed  to  be  fighting  some- 
thing from  his  face.  "  Bushes,"  whispered 
Enoch  Haver,  and  then  added,  "  Now  he's 
climbing  up  the  bank  of  the  ravine."  And  we 
saw  the  lean  hands  on  the  bed  clutch  up  the 
wall,  and  then  the  voice  broke  forth :  "  Me  first 
— first  up — get  away  from  here,  Dock — I  said 
first,"  and  we  could  see  his  hands  climbing  an 
imaginary  tree. 

His  face  glowed  with  the  excitement  of  his 
delirium  as  he  climbed,  and  then  apparently 
catching  his  breath  he  rested  before  he  called 
out:  "I'm  comin'  down,  clear  the  track  for 
old  Dan  Tucker,"  and  from  the  convulsive  grip- 
ping of  his  hands  and  arms  and  the  hysterical 


In  Our  Town  189 

intake  of  his  breath  we  who  had  seen  Joe  Nevi- 
son  dive  from  the  top  of  the  old  tree,  from  limb 
to  limb  to  the  bottom,  knew  what  he  was  doing. 
His  heart  was  thumping  audibly  when  he  fin- 
ished, and  we  tried  to  calm  him.  For  a  while 
we  all  sat  about  him  in  silence — forgetting  the 
walls  that  shut  us  in,  and  living  with  him  in  the 
open,  Slaves  of  the  Magic  Tree.  Then  one  by 
one  we  left  and  only  George  Kirwin  stayed  with 
the  sick  man. 

Joe  Nevison  had  lived  a  wicked  life.  He 
had  been  the  friend  and  companion  of  vile  men 
and  the  women  whom  such  men  choose,  and  they 
had  lived  lives  such  as  we  in  our  little  town  only 
read  about — and  do  not  understand.  Yet  all 
that  night  Joe  Nevison  roamed  through  the 
woods  by  the  creek,  a  little  child,  and  no  word 
passed  his  lips  that  could  have  brought  a  hint 
of  the  vicious  life  that  his  manhood  had  known. 

In  that  long  night,  while  George  Kirwin  sat 
by  his  dying  friend,  listening  to  his  babble, 
two  men  were  in  the  genii's  hands.  They  put 
off  their  years  as  a  garment.  Together  they 
ran  over  the  roofs  of  buildings  on  Main  Street 
that  have  been  torn  down  for  thirty  years ;  they 


19°  In  Our  Town 

played  In  barns  and  corncribs  burned  down  so 
long  ago  that  their  very  site  is  in  doubt; 
they  romped  over  prairies  where  now  are  elm- 
covered  streets;  and  they  played  with  boys  and 
girls  who  have  lain  forgotten  in  little  sunken 
graves  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  out  on  the 
hill;  or  they  called  from  the  four  winds  of 
heaven  playmates  who  left  our  town  at  a  time 
so  remote  that  to  the  watcher  by  the  bed  it 
seemed  ages  ago.  The  games  they  played  were 
of  another  day  than  this.  When  Joe  began  cry- 
ing "  Barbaree,"  he  summoned  a  troop  of 
ghosts,  and  the  pack  went  scampering  through 
the  spectre  town  in  the  starlight;  and  when 
that  game  had  tired  him  the  voice  began  to 
chatter  of  "  Slap-and-a-kick,"  and  "  Foot-and-a- 
half,"  and  of  "  Rolly-poley,"  and  of  the  ball 
games — "  Scrub,"  and  "  Town-ball,"  and 
"  Anteover,"  each  old  game  conjuring  up 
spirits  from  its  own  vasty  deep  until  the  room 
was  full  of  phantoms  and  the  watcher's  memory 
ached  with  the  sweet  sorrow  of  old  joys. 

George  Kirwin  says  that  long  after  midnight 
Joe  awakened  from  a  doze,  fumbling  through 
the  bedclothes,  looking  for  something.  Finally 


In  Our  Town  191 

he  complained  that  he  could  not  find  his  mouth- 
harp.  They  tried  to  make  him  forget  it,  but 
when  they  failed,  his  mother  went  to  the  bureau 
and  pulling  open  the  lower  drawer  found  a  little 
varnished  box;  under  the  shaded  lamp  she 
brought  out  a  sack  of  marbles,  a  broken  bean- 
shooter,  with  whittled  prongs,  a  Barlow  knife, 
a  tintype  picture  of  a  boy,  and  the  mouth-organ. 
This  she  gave  to  the  hands  that  fluttered  about 
the  face  on  the  pillow.  He  began  to  play  "  The 
Mocking  Bird,"  opening  and  shutting  his  bony 
hands  to  let  the  music  rise  and  fall.  When  he 
closed  that  tune  he  played  "  O  the  Mistletoe 
Bough,"  and  after  that  over  and  over  again 
he  played  "  Tenting  on  the  Old  Camp  Ground." 
When  he  dropped  the  mouth-harp,  he  lay  very 
still  for  a  time,  though  his  lips  moved  inces- 
santly. The  morning  was  coming,  and  he  was 
growing  weak.  But  when  his  voice  came  back 
they  knew  that  he  was  far  afield  again;  for  he 
said,  u  Come  on,  fellers,  let's  set  down  here 
under  the  hill  and  rest.  It's  a  long  ways  back." 
When  he  had  rested  he  spoke  up  again,  "  Say, 
fellers,  what'll  we  sing?  "  George  tried  him  with 
a  gospel  hymn,  but  Joe  would  have  none  of  it, 


i92  In  Our  Tc.vn 

and  reviled  the  song  and  the  singer  after  the 
fashion  of  boys.  In  a  moment  he  exclaimed: 
"  Here — listen  to  me.  Let's  sing  this,"  and  his 
alto  voice  came  out  uncertainly  and  faintly: 
"  Wrap  Me  up  in  My  Tarpaulin  Jacket." 

George  Kirwin's  rough  voice  joined  the  song 
and  the  mother  listened  and  wept.  Other  old 
songs  followed,  but  Joe  Nevison,  the  man, 
never  woke  up.  It  was  the  little  boy  full  of  the 
poetry  and  sweetness  of  a  child  at  play,  the 
boy  who  had  turned  the  poetry  of  his  boyish 
soul  into  a  life  of  adventure  unchecked  by  moral 
restraint,  whose  eyes  they  closed  that  morning. 

And  George  Kirwin  explained  to  us  when  he 
came  down  to  work  that  afternoon,  that  maybe 
the  bad  part  of  Joe  Nevison's  soul  had  shrivelled 
away  during  his  sickness,  instead  of  waiting  for 
death.  George  told  us  that  what  made  him  sad 
was  that  a  soul  in  which  there  was  so  much  that 
might  have  been  good  had  been  stunted  by  life 
and  was  entering  eternity  with  so  little  to  show 
for  its  earthly  journey. 

When  one  considers  it,  one  finds  that  Joe 
Nevison  wasted  his  life  most  miserably.  There 
was  nothing  to  his  credit  to  say  in  his  obit- 


In  Our  Town  193 

uary — no  good  deed  to  recount  and  there  were 
many,  many  bad  ones.  Moreover,  the  sorrow 
and  bitterness  that  he  brought  into  his  father's 
last  days,  and  the  shame  that  he  put  upon  his 
mother,  who  lived  to  see  his  end,  made  it  im- 
possible for  our  paper  to  say  of  him  any  kind 
thing  that  would  not  have  seemed  maudlin. 

Yet  at  Joe  Nevison's  funeral  the  old  settlers, 
many  of  them  broken  in  years  and  by  trouble, 
gathered  at  the  little  wooden  church  in  the 
hollow  below  the  track,  to  see  the  last  of  him, 
though  certainly  not  to  pay  him  a  tribute  of  re- 
spect. They  remembered  him  as  the  little  boy 
who  had  trudged  up  the  hill  to  school  when  the 
old  stone  schoolhouse  was  the  only  stone  build- 
ing in  town ;  they  remembered  him  as  he  was  in 
the  days  when  he  began  to  turn  Marshal  Purge- 
son's  hair  grey  with  wild  pranks.  They  remem- 
bered the  boy's  childish  virtues,  and  could  feel 
the  remorse  that  must  at  times  have  gnawed  his 
heart.  Also  these  old  men  and  women  knew  of 
the  devil  of  unbridled  passion  that  the  child's 
father  had  put  into  Joe's  blood.  And  when  he 
started  down  the  broad  road  they  had  seen  his 
track  beyond  him.  So  as  the  little  gathering  of 


194  In  Our  Town 

old  people  filed  through  the  church  door  and 
lined  up  on  the  sidewalk  waiting  for  the 
mourners  to  come  out,  we  heard  through  the 
crowd  white  haired  men  sighing:  "Poor  Joe; 
poor  fellow."  Can  one  hope  that  God's  for- 
giveness will  be  fuller  than  that  1 


XIII 
A  Pilgrim  in  the  Wilderness 


A^EW  years  ago  we  were  getting  out  a 
special  edition  of  our  paper,  printed  on 
book-paper,  and  filled  with  pictures  of 
the  old  settlers,  and  we  called  it  "  the  historical 
edition."  In  preparing  the  historical  edition  we 
had  to  confer  with  "  Aunt  "  Martha  Merrifield 
so  often  that  George  Kirwin,  the  foreman,  who 
was  kept  trotting  to  her  with  proof-slips  and 
copy  for  her  to  revise,  remarked,  as  he  was 
making  up  the  last  form  of  the  troublesome 
edition,  that,  if  the  recording  angel  ever  had  a 
fire  in  his  office,  he  could  make  up  the  record  for 
our  town  from  "  Aunt  "  Martha's  scrapbook. 
In  that  big,  fat,  crinkly-leafed  book,  she  has 
pasted  so  many  wedding  notices  and  birth  no- 
tices and  death  notices  that  one  who  reads  the 
book  wonders  how  so  many  people  could  have 
been  born,  married  and  died  in  a  town  of  only 
ten  thousand  inhabitants.  One  evening,  while 
the  historical  edition  was  growing,  a  reporter 

195 


196  In  Our  Town 

spent  the  evening  with  "  Aunt "  Martha. 
The  talk  drifted  back  to  the  early  days,  and 
"  Aunt "  Martha  mentioned  Balderson.  To 
identify  him  she  went  to  her  scrapbook,  and 
as  she  was  turning  the  pages  she  said: 

"  In  those  days  of  the  early  seventies,  before 
the  railroad  came,  when  the  town  awoke  in  the 
morning  and  found  a  newly  arrived  covered 
waggon  near  a  neighbour's  house,  it  always 
meant  that  kin  had  come.  If  at  school  that  day 
the  children  from  the  house  of  visitation  bragged 
about  their  relatives,  expatiating  upon  the  power 
and  riches  that  they  left  back  East,  the  town 
knew  that  the  visitors  were  ordinary  kin;  but 
if  the  children  from  the  afflicted  household  said 
little  about  the  visitors  and  evidently  tried  to 
avoid  telling  just  who  they  were,  then  the  town 
knew  that  the  strangers  were  poor  kin — proba- 
bly some  of  "  his  folks  "  ;  for  it  was  well  under- 
stood that  the  women  in  this  town  all  came  from 
high  connections  '  back  East '  in  Illinois,  Ohio, 
Indiana,  and  Iowa.  Newcomers  sometimes  won- 
dered how  such  a  galaxy  of  princesses  and  duch- 
esses and  ladyships  happened  to  marry  so  far 
beneath  their  station. 


In   Our  Town  197 

"  But  the  Dixons  had  no  children,  so  when  a 
covered  waggon  drove  up  to  their  place  in  the 
night,  and  a  fussy,  pussy  little  man  with  a  dingy, 
stringy  beard,  appeared  in  the  Dixons'  back 
yard  in  the  morning,  looking  after  the  horses 
hitched  to  the  strange  waggon ;  the  town  had  to 
wait  until  the  next  week's  issue  of  the  Statesman 
to  get  reliable  news  about  their  prospective 
fellow-citizen."  With  that  "  Aunt "  Martha 
opened  her  scrapbook  and  read  a  clipping  from 
the  Statesman,  under  the  head,  "  A  Valuable 
Acquisition  to  Our  City."  It  ran: 

"  It  has  been  many  months  since  we  havfe  been 
favoured  with  a  call  from  so  cultured  and 
learned  a  gentleman  as  the  Hon.  Andoneran  P. 
Balderson,  late  of  Quito,  Hancock  County, 
Iowa,  who  has  finally  determined  to  settle  in  our 
midst.  Cramped  by  the  irritating  conventional- 
ities of  an  effete  civilisation,  Colonel  Balderson 
comes  among  us  for  that  larger  freedom  and 
wider  horizon  which  his  growing  powers  de- 
mand. He  comes  with  the  ripened  experience 
of  a  jurist,  a  soldier,  and  a  publicist,  and,  when 
transportation  facilities  have  been  completed 
between  this  and  the  Missouri  River,  Judge 


198  In  Our  Town 

Balderson  will  bring  to  our  little  city  his  mag- 
nificent law  library;  but  until  then  he  will  be 
found  over  the  Elite  Oyster  Bay,  where  he  will 
be  glad  to  welcome  clients  and  others. 

"  Having  participated  in  the  late  War  of  the 
Rebellion,  as  captain  in  Company  G  of  Colonel 
Jennison's  famous  and  invincible  army  of  the 
border,  Colonel  Balderson  will  give  special  at- 
tention to  pension  matters.  He  also  will  set  to 
work  to  obtain  a  complete  set  of  abstracts,  and 
will  be  glad  to  give  advice  on  real-estate  law 
and  the  practice  of  eminent  domain,  to  which 
subject  he  has  given  deep  study.  All  business 
done  with  neatness  and  despatch. 

"  Before  leaving  Iowa,  and  after  consider- 
able pressure,  Judge  Balderson  consented  to  act 
as  agent  for  a  number  of  powerful  Eastern  fire 
insurance  companies,  and  has  in  contemplation 
the  establishment  of  the  Southwestern  distrib- 
uting point  for  the  Multum  in  Parvo  Farm  Gate 
Company,  of  which  corporation  Colonel  Bal- 
derson owns  the  patent  right  for  Kansas.  This 
business,  however,  he  would  be  willing  to  dis- 
pose of  to  proper  parties.  Terms  on  application. 

"  The  colonel   desires  us  to   announce  that 


In  Our  Town  *99 

there  will  be  a  meeting  of  the  veterans  of  the 
late  war  at  the  school-house  next  Saturday  night, 
for  the  purpose  of  organising  a  society  to  refresh 
and  perpetuate  the  sacred  memories  of  that  gi- 
gantic struggle,  and  to  rally  around  the  old  flag, 
touch  shoulders  again,  and  come  into  a  closer 
fellowship  for  benevolent,  social,  and  other  pur- 
poses. The  judge,  on  that  occasion,  will  deliver 
his  famous  address  on  the  *  Battle  of  Look  Out 
Mountain,'  in  which  battle  Colonel  Balderson 
participated  as  a  member  of  an  Iowa  regiment. 
Admission  free.  Silver  collection  to  defray  nec- 
essary expenses." 

Accompanying  this  article  was  a  slightly  worn 
woodcut  of  the  colonel  in  his  soldier  garb,  a  cap 
with  the  top  drawn  forward,  the  visor  low  over 
his  eyes,  and  a  military  overcoat  thrown  gaily 
back,  exposing  his  shoulder.  The  picture  showed 
the  soldier  in  profile,  with  a  fierce  military  mous- 
tache and  a  stubby,  runty  goatee,  meant  to  strike 
terror  to  the  civilian  heart. 

From  "  Aunt "  Martha  we  learned  that  be- 
fore Judge  Balderson  had  been  in  town  a  week 
he  had  dyed  his  whiskers  and  had  taken  com- 
mand of  our  forces  in  the  county-seat  war  then 


200  Jn  Our  Town 

brewing.  During  the  judge's  first  month  in  the 
county  the  campaign  for  the  county-seat  election 
was  opened,  and  he  canvassed  the  north  end  of 
the  county  for  our  town,  denouncing,  with  elab- 
orate eloquence,  as  horse  thieves,  mendicants, 
and  renegades  from  justice,  the  settlers  in  the 
south  end  of  the  county  who  favoured  the  rival 
town.  The  judge  organised  a  military  company 
and  picketed  the  hills  about  our  town  day  and 
night  against  a  raid  from  the  Southenders ;  and, 
having  stirred  public  passion  deeply,  he  turned 
his  pickets  loose  on  the  morning  of  election  day 
to  set  prairie  fires  all  over  the  south  end  of  the 
county  to  harass  the  settlers  who  might  vote  for 
the  rival  town  and  keep  them  away  from  the 
polls  fighting  fire. 

Our  people  won;  "  the  hell-hounds  of  disorder 
and  anarchy  " — as  Judge  Balderson  called  the 
rival  townspeople — were  "  rebuked  by  the  stern 
hand  of  a  just  and  terrible  Providence."  Bal- 
derson was  a  hero,  and  our  people  sent  him  to 
the  legislature.  "Aunt"  Martha  added: 

"  He  went  to  Topeka  in  his  blue  soldier 
clothes,  his  campaign  hat,  and  brass  buttons; 
but  he  came  back,  at  the  first  recess,  in  diamonds 


In  Our  Town  201 

and  fine  linen,  and  the  town  sniffed  a  little." 
Having  learned  this  much  of  Balderson  our  of- 
fice became  interested  in  him,  and  a  reporter 
was  set  to  work  to  look  up  Balderson.  The 
reporter  found  that  according  to  Wilder's 
"  Annals,"  Balderson  hustled  himself  into  the 
chairmanship  of  the  railroad  committee  and  be- 
came a  power  in  the  State.  The  next  time 
Colonel  "  Alphabetical  "  Morrison  came  to  the 
office  he  was  asked  for  further  details  about  Bal- 
derson. The  Colonel  told  us  that  when  the  legis- 
lature finally  adjourned,  very  proud  and  very 
drunk,  in  the  bedlam  of  the  closing  hours, 
Judge  Balderson  mounted  a  desk,  waved  the 
Stars  and  Stripes,  and  told  of  the  Battle 
of  Look  Out  Mountain.  Colonel  Morrison 
chuckled  as  he  added:  "  The  next  day  the  State 
Journal  printed  his  picture — the  one  with  the 
slouching  cap,  the  military  moustache,  the  fierce 
goatee,  and  the  devil-may-care  cape — and  re- 
ferred to  the  judge  as  '  the  silver-tongued  orator 
of  the  Cottonwood,'  a  title  which  began  to 
amuse  the  fellows  around  town." 

Naturally  he  was  a  candidate  for  Congress. 
Colonel  Morrison  says  that  Balderson  became 


202  In  Our  Town 

familiarly  known  in  State  politics  as  Little 
Baldy,  and  was  in  demand  at  soldiers'  meetings 
and  posed  as  the  soldier's  friend. 

Wilder's  "  Annals  "  records  the  fact  that  Bal- 
derson  failed  to  go  to  Congress,  but  went  to 
the  State  Senate.  He  waxed  fat.  We  learned 
that  he  bought  a  private  bank  and  all  the  books 
recording  abstracts  of  title  to  land  in  his  county, 
and  that  he  affected  a  high  silk  hat  when  he  went 
to  Chicago,  while  his  townsmen  were  inclined 
to  eye  him  askance.  The  lack  of  three  votes 
from  his  home  precinct  kept  him  from  being 
nominated  lieutenant-governor  by  his  party, 
but  Colonel  Morrison  says  that  Balderson  soon 
took  on  the  title  of  governor,  and  was  unruffled 
by  his  defeat.  The  Colonel  describes  Balderson 
as  assuming  the  air  of  a  kind  of  sacred  white 
cow,  and  putting  much  hair-oil  and  ointment 
and  frankincense  upon  his  carcass.  Other  old 
settlers  say  that  in  those  days  his  dyed  whiskers 
fairly  glistened.  And  when,  at  State  conven- 
tions, in  the  fervour  of  his  passion  he  unbent, 
unbuttoned  his  frock-coat,  grabbed  the  old 
flag,  and  charged  up  and  down  the  plat- 
form in  an  oratorical  frensy,  it  seemed  that 


In  Our  Town  203 

another  being  had  emerged  from  the  greasy 
little  roll  of  adipose  in  which  "  Governor  "  Bal- 
derson  enshrined  himself.  His  climax  was  invar- 
iably the  wavering  battle-line  upon  the  moun- 
tain, the  flag  tottering  and  about  to  fall,  "  when 
suddenly  it  rises  and  goes  forward,  up — up — up 
the  hill,  through  the  smoke  of  hell,  and  full  and 
fair  into  the  teeth  of  death,  with  ten  thousand 
cheering,  maddened  soldiers  behind  it.  And  who 
carried  that  flag — who  carried  that  flag?"  he 
would  scream,  in  a  tremulous  voice,  repeating 
his  question  over  and  over,  and  then  answer 
himself  in  tragic  bass:  "The  little  corporal 
of  Company  B!"  And,  "Who  fell  into  the 
arms  of  victory  that  great  day,  with  four 
wounds  upon  his  body?  The  little  corporal  of 
Company  B  !  "  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that 
Governor  Balderson  was  the  little  corporal. 

After  the  failure  of  his  bank,  when  rumour 
accused  him  of  burning  the  court-house  that  he 
might  sell  his  abstracts  to  the  county  at  a  fabu- 
lous price,  he  called  a  public  meeting  to  hear  his 
defence,  and  repeated  to  his  townsmen  that 
query,  "Who  carried  the  flag?"  adding  in  a 
hoarse  whisper:  "And  yet — great  God! — they 


204  In  Our  Town 

say  that  the  little  corporal  is  an  in-cen-di-ary- 
Was  this  great  war  fought  in  vain,  that  tr-e-e-sin 
should  lift  her  hydra  head  to  hiss  out  such 
blasphemy  upon  the  boys  who  wore  the  blue  ?  " 

However,  the  evidence  was  against  him,  and 
as  our  people  had  long  since  lost  interest  in  the 
flag-bearer,  the  committee  gave  him  five  minutes 
to  leave.  He  returned  three  minutes  in  change 
and  struck  out  over  the-  hill  towards  the  west, 
afoot,  and  the  town  knew  him  no  more  forever. 

Where  Balderson  went  after  leaving  town  no 
one  seems  to  know.  The  earth  might  have 
swallowed  him  up.  But  in  1882  someone  sent 
a  marked  copy  of  the  Denver  Tribune  to  the 
Statesman  office,  the  Statesman  reprinted  it,  and 
44  Aunt "  Martha  filed  it  away  in  her  book. 
Here  is  it: 

44  Big  Burro  Springs,  Colorado,  September 
yth  (Special). — Three  men  were  killed  yester- 
day in  a  fight  between  the  men  at  Jingle-bob 
ranch  and  a  surveying  party  under  A.  P.  Balder- 
son.  The  Balderson  party  consisted  of  four  men, 
among  whom  was  4  Rowdy  '  Joe  Nevison,  the 
famous  marshal  of  Leoti,  Kansas.  They  were 
locating  a  reservoir  site  which  Balderson  has 


In   Our  Town  205 

taken  up  on  Burro  Creek  for  the  Balderson  Irri- 
gation Company  and  for  supplying  the  Look 
Out  Townsite  Company  with  water.  These  are 
Balderson's  schemes,  and,  if  established,  will  put 
the  Jingle-bob  ranch  people  out  of  business,  as 
they  have  no  title  to  the  land  on  which  they  are 
operating.  The  remarkable  part  of  the  fight  is 
that  which  Balderson  took  in  it.  After  two  of 
his  men  had  been  killed  and  the  owner  of  the 
Jingle-bob  ranch  had  fallen,  Balderson  and  his 
two  remaining  men  came  forward  with  hands 
up,  waving  handkerchiefs.  The  Jingle-bob  peo- 
ple recognised  the  flag  of  truce,  and  Balderson 
led  his  men  across  the  creek  to  the  cow-camp. 
Just  as  he  approached  close  enough  to  the  man 
who  had  the  party  covered,  Balderson  yelled, 
*  Watch  out — back  of  you !  '  and,  as  all  the 
captors  turned  their  heads,  Balderson  knocked 
the  pistol  from  the  hand  of  the  only  man  whose 
weapon  was  pointed  at  the  Balderson  party,  and 
the  next  moment  the  cow-men  looked  into  the 
barrels  of  the  surveyors'  three  revolvers,  and 
were  told  that  if  they  budged  a  hair  they  would 
be  killed.  Balderson  then  disarmed  the  cow-men, 
and,  after  passing  around  the  drinks,  hired  the 


206  In  Our  Town 

outfit  as  policemen  for  the  town  of  Look  Out. 
It  is  said  that  he  has  given  them  two  thousand 
dollars  apiece  in  Irrigation  Company  stock, 
has  promised  to  defend  them  if  they  are  charged 
with  the  murder  of  the  two  surveyors,  and  has 
given  each  cow-man  a  deed  to  a  corner  lot  on 
the  public  square  of  the  prospective  Balderson 
town.  Deputy  Sheriff  Crosby  from  this  place 
went  over  to  arrest  Balderson,  charged  with  kill- 
ing D.  V.  Sherman  of  the  Jingle-bob  property, 
and,  after  asking  for  his  warrant,  Balderson 
took  it,  put  it  in  his  pocket,  advised  the  deputy 
to  hurry  home,  and,  if  he  found  any  coyotes  or 
jack-rabbits  that  couldn't  get  out  of  his  way  fast 
enough,  not  to  stop  to  kill  them,  but  shoo  them 
off  the  trail  and  save  time." 

They  say  in  Colorado  that  Balderson  became 
an  irrigation  king.  It  is  certain  that  he  raised 
half  a  million  dollars  in  New  York  for  his  dam 
and  ditches.  He  built  the  "  Look  Out  Opera 
House,"  and  decorated  it  in  gilded  stucco  and 
with  red  plush  two  inches  deep.  Morrison  con- 
tributed this  anecdote  to  the  office  Legend  of 
Balderson :  "  He  was  in  Florida  in  his  private 
car  when  they  finished  the  opera  house.  When 


In  Our  Town  207 

he  came  back  and  saw  a  plaster  bust  of  Shake- 
speare over  the  proscenium  arch,  he  waved  his 
cane  pompously  and  exclaimed :  *  Take  her 
down !  Bill  Shakespeare  is  all  right  for  the  effete 
East,  but  out  here  he  ain't  deuce  high  with  the 
little  corporal  of  Company  B.'  '  So  in  Shake- 
speare's niche  is  a  plaster-cast  of  a  soldier's  face 
with  the  slouch-cap,  the  military  moustache,  and 
the  goatee  of  great  pride,  after  the  picture  that 
once  adorned  the  columns  of  the  Statesman. 
For  a  time  they  talked  of  Balderson  for  United 
States  Senator,  and,  at  the  laying  of  the  corner- 
stone of  the  capitol,  the  Denver  papers  spoke 
of  the  masterly  oration  of  former  Governor 
Balderson  of  Kansas,  whose  marvellous  word- 
painting  of  the  Battle  of  Look  Out  Mountain 
held  the  vast  audience  spellbound  for  an  hour. 
A  few  months  later  a  cloudburst  carried  away 
the  Big  Burro  dam,  and  times  went  bad,  and  the 
stockholders  in  Balderson's  company,  who  would 
have  rebuilt  the  dam,  could  not  find  Balderson 
when  they  needed  him,  and  certain  creditors  of 
the  company,  hitherto  unknown,  appeared,  and 
Balderson  faded  away  like  a  morning  star. 
Here  is  a  part  of  the  narrative  that  George 


208  In  Our  Town 

Kirwin  got  from  Joe  Nevison :  Joe  began  with 
the  coal  strike  at  Castle  Rock,  Wyoming,  in 
1893,  when  the  strikers  massed  on  Flat  Top 
Mountain  and  day  after  day  went  through  their 
drill.  He  told  a  highly  dramatic  story  of  the 
stoutish  little  man  of  fifty-five,  with  a  fat, 
smooth-shaven  face,  who  pounded  that  horde 
of  angry  men  into  some  semblance  of  military 
order.  All  day  the  little  man,  in  his  shrunken 
seersucker  coat  and  greasy  white  hat,  would 
bark  orders  at  the  men,  march  and  counter- 
march them,  and  go  through  the  manual  of 
arms',  backward  and  forward  and  seven  hands 
round.  When  the  battle  with  the  militia  came, 
the  strikers  charged  down  Flat  Top  and  fought 
bravely.  The  little  man  in  the  seersucker  coat 
stayed  with  them,  snapping  orders  at  them, 
damning  them,  coaxing  them.  And  when  the 
deputies  gathered  up  the  strikers  for  the  trial 
in  court  two  months  later,  the  little  man  was 
still  there.  He  was  prospecting  on  a  gopher- 
hole  somewhere  up  in  the  hills,  and  was  try- 
ing to  get  his  wildcat  mine  listed  on  the  Salt 
Lake  Mining  Exchange.  No  one  gave  bond  for 
the  little  man  in  the  seersucker  coat,  and  he  went 


In  Our  Town  209 

to  jail.  He  was  Balderson.  He  seemed  to  give 
little  heed  to  the  trial,  and  sat  with  the  strikers 
rather  stolidly.  Venire  after  venire  of  jurymen 
was  gone  through.  At  last  an  old  man  wearing 
a  Loyal  Legion  button  went  into  the  jury-box. 
Balderson  saw  him ;  they  exchanged  recognising 
glances,  and  Balderson  turned  scarlet  and  looked 
away  quickly.  He  nudged  an  attorney  for 
the  strikers  and  said:  "  Keep  him,  whatever 
you  do." 

After  the  evidence  was  all  in  and  the  attor- 
neys were  about  to  make  their  arguments,  Bal- 
derson and  one  of  the  lawyers  for  the  strikers 
were  alone. 

'  They  told  me  to  take  the  part  about  you, 
Balderson ;  you  were  in  the  Union  Army,  weren't 
you?" 

Balderson  looked  at  the  floor  and  said: 
"Yes;  but  don't  say  anything  about  it." 
The  lawyer,  who  knew  Balderson's  record, 
was  astonished.  He  had  made  his  whole  speech 
up  on  the  line  that  Balderson  as  an  old  soldier 
would  appeal  to  the  sympathies  of  the  jury. 
Over  and  over  the  lawyer  pressed  Balderson  to 
know  why  nothing  should  be  said  of  his  soldier 


210  In  Our  Town 

record,  and  finally  in  exasperation  the  lawyer 
broke  out : 

"  Lookee  here,  Baldy;  you're  too  old  to  get 
coy.  I'm  going  to  make  my  speech  as  I've 
mapped  it  out,  soldier  racket  and  all.  I  guess 
you've  taken  enough  trips  up  Look  Out  Moun- 
tain to  get  used  to  the  altitude  by  this  time." 

The  lawyer  started  away,  but  Balderson 
grabbed  him  and  pulled  him  back.  "  Don't  do 
it;  for  God's  sake,  don't  do  it!  There's  a  fellow 
on  that  jury  that's  a  G.  A.  R.  man;  we  were  sol- 
diers together;  he  knows  me  from  away  back. 
Talk  of  lowy;  talk  of  Kansas;  talk  of  anything 
on  God's  green  earth,  but  don't  talk  soldier. 
That  man  would  wade  through  hell  for  me  neck 
deep  on  any  other  basis  than  that."  Balderson's 
voice  was  quivering.  He  added:  "But  don't 
talk  soldier."  Balderson  slumped,  with  his  head 
in  his  hands.  The  attorney  snapped  at  him: 

"  Weren't  you  a  soldier?  " 

44  Yes;  oh,  yes,"  Balderson  sighed. 

"Didn't  you  go  up  Look  Out  Mountain?" 

"  Oh,  yes — that,  too." 

There  was  a  silence  between  the  men.  The 
lawyer  rasped  it  with,  "  Well,  what  then?  " 


Iii  Our  Town  21  r 

"Well — well,"  and  the  tousled  little  man 
sighed  so  deeply  his  sigh  was  almost  a  sob,  and 
lifted  up  the  eyes  of  a  whipped  dog  to  the 
lawyer's — "  after  that  I  got  in  the  commissary 
department — and — and  —  was  dishonourably 
discharged."  He  rubbed  his  eyes  with  his 
fingers  a  moment  and  then  grinned  foxily: 
"Ain't  that  enough?" 

Roosevelt  is  a  mining-camp  in  Idaho.  It  is 
five  days  from  a  morning  paper,  and  the  camp 
is  new.  It  is  a  log  town  with  one  street  and 
no  society,  except  such  as  may  gather  around 
the  big  box-stove  at  Johnnie  Conyer's  saloon. 
A  number  of  ladies  and  two  women  lived 
in  the  camp,  a  few  tin-horn  "  gents,"  and 
about  two  hundred  men.  It  is  a  seven  months' 
snow-camp,  where  men  take  their  drama  canned 
in  the  phonograph,  their  food  canned,  their 
medicine  all  out  of  one  bottle,  and  their  mor- 
als "without  benefit  of  clergy."  Across  the 
front  of  one  of  the  canvas-covered  log  store- 
rooms that  fringe  the  single  street  a  cloth  sign 
is  stretched.  It  reads,  "  Department  Store," 
and  inside  a  dance  hall,  a  saloon,  and  a 
gambling-place  are  operating.  A  few  years  ago, 


212  In  Our  Town 

when  Colonel  Alphabetical  Morrison  was 
travelling  through  the  West  on  a  land  deal 
for  John  Markley,  business  took  him  to  Roose- 
velt, and  he  found  Balderson,  grey  of  beard, 
shiny  of  pate,  with  unkempt,  ratty  back  hair; 
he  was  watery-eyed,  and  his  red-veined  skin  had 
slipped  down  from  his  once  fat  face  into  drap- 
eries over  his  lean  neck  and  jowls.  He  was  in 
the  dealer's  chair,  running  the  game. 

The  statute  of  limitations  had  covered  all  his 
Kansas  misdeeds,  and  he  nodded  affably  as  his 
old  acquaintance  came  in.  Later  in  the  day  the 
two  men  went  to  Mrs.  Smith's  boarding-house 
to  take  a  social  bite.  They  sat  in  front  of  the 
log-house  in  the  evening,  Balderson  mellow  and 
reminiscent. 

"  Seems  to  me  this  way:  I  ain't  cut  out  for 
society  as  it  is  organised.  I  do  all  right  in  a  town 
until  the  piano  begins  to  get  respectable  and  the 
rules  of  order  are  tucked  snugly  inside  the  deca- 
logue, then  I  slip  my  belt,  and  my  running  gear 
doesn't  track.  I  get  a  few  grand  and  noble 
thoughts,  freeze  to  'em,  and  later  find  that  the 
hereditary  appurtenances  thereunto  appertaining 
are  private  property  of  someone  else,  and  there 


In  Our  Town  213 

is  nothing  for  me  to  do  but  to  stand  a  lawsuit  or 
vanish.  I  have  had  bad  luck,  lost  my  money,  lost 
my  friends,  lost  my  conscience,  lost  everything, 
pretty  near  " — and  here  he  turned  his  watery 
eyes  on  his  friend  with  a  saw-toothed  smile  and 
shook  his  depleted  abdomen,  that  had  been  worn 
off  climbing  many  hills — "  I've  lost  everything, 
pretty  near,  but  my  vermiform  appendix  and  my 
table  of  contents,  and  as  like  as  not  I'll  find  some 
feller's  got  them  copyrighted."  He  heaved  a 
great  sigh  and  resumed,  "  I  suppose  I  could  'a' 
stood  it  all  well  enough  if  I  had  just  had  some 
sort  of  faith,  some  religious  consolation,  some 
creed,  or  god,  or  something."  He  sighed  again, 
and  then  leered  up:  "  But,  you  know — I'm  so 
damned  skeptic !  " 

Last  spring,  according  to  the  Boise,  Idaho, 
papers,  "  Governor  "  Balderson  and  two  other 
old  soldiers  celebrated  Memorial  Day  in  Roose- 
velt. They  got  a  muslin  flag  as  big  as  the  flap  of 
a  shirt,  from  heaven  knows  where,  and  in  the 
streets  of  Roosevelt  they  hoisted  this  flag  on  the 
highest  pine  pole  in  all  the  Salmon  River  Moun- 
tains. There  were  elaborate  ceremonies,  and  to 
the  miners  and  gamblers  and  keepers  of  wildcat 


214  In  Our  Town 

mines  in  the  mountains  assembled,  "  Governor  " 
Balderson  told  eloquently  of  the  Battle  of  Look 
Out  Mountain.  And  Colonel  Morrison  who 
read  the  account  smiled  appreciatively  and 
pointed  out  to  us  the  exact  stage  in  the  proceed- 
ings where  Balderson  demanded  to  know  who 
carried  the  flag.  There  was  long  and  tumultuous 
applause  at  the  climax. 

We  also  read  in  the  Boise  papers  that  at  the 
fall  election  in  Roosevelt  they  made  Balderson 
justice  of  the  peace,  which,  as  Colonel  Morrison 
explained,  was  a  purely  honorary  office  in  a  com- 
munity where  every  man  is  his  own  court  and 
constable  and  jury  and  judge;  but  the  Colonel 
said  that  Balderson  was  proud  of  official  dis- 
tinction, and  probably  levied  mild  tribute  from 
the  people  who  indulged  in  riotous  living,  by 
compelling  them  to  buy  drink-checks  redeem- 
able only  at  his  department  store. 

It  was  from  the  Boise  papers  that  we  had  the 
final  word  from  Balderson.  A  message  came  to 
Roosevelt  this  spring  that  an  outfit,  thirty 
miles  away  at  the  head  of  Profile  Creek, 
was  sick  and  starving.  It  was  a  dangerous 
trip  to  the  rescue,  for  snowslides  were  boom- 


In  Our  Town  215 

ing  on  every  southern  hillside.  Death  would  lit- 
erally play  tag  with  the  man  who  dared  to  hit 
the  trail  for  Profile.  Balderson  did  not  hesitate 
a  moment,  but  filled  his  pack  with  provisions, 
put  a  marked  deck  and  some  loaded  dice  in  his 
pocket,  and  waved  Roosevelt  a  cheery  good-by 
as  he  struck  out  over  the  three  logs  that  bridge 
Mule  Creek.  He  was  bundled  to  the  chin  in 
warm  coats,  and  on  his  way  met  Hot  Foot  Hig- 
gins  coming  in  from  Profile.  Balderson  seems 
to  have  given  Higgins  his  warmest  coat  before 
the  snow-slide  hit  them.  It  killed  them  both. 
Hot  Foot  died  instantly,  but  Balderson  must 
have  lived  many  hours,  for  the  snow  about  his 
body  was  melted  and  in  his  pocket  they  found 
Hot  Foot's  watch. 

They  buried  him  near  the  trail  where  they 
found  him,  and,  stuck  in  a  candle-box,  over  the 
heap  of  stones  above  him,  flutters  lonesomely  in 
the  desolation  of  the  mountain-side  the  little 
muslin  rag  that  was  once  a  flag.  They  call  the 
hill  on  which  he  sleeps  "  Look  Out  Mountain." 

Late  this  spring  the  mail  brought  to  the  office 
of  the  Boise  Capital-News  a  battered  woodcut 
half  a  century  old.  When  the  News  came  to 


216  In  Our  Town 

our  office  we  saw  the  familiar  soldier's  face  in 
profile,  with  a  cap  drawn  over  the  eyes,  with  a 
waving  moustache  and  a  fierce  goatee,  and  across 
the  shoulders  of  the  figure  a  military  cape  thrown 
back  jauntily.  With  the  old  cut  in  the  Boise 
paper  was  an  article  which  the  editor  says  in  a 
note  was  written  in  a  young  woman's  angular 
handwriting,  done  in  pencil  on  wrapping-paper. 
The  article  told,  in  spelling  unspeakable,  of  the 
greatness  and  goodness  of  "  Ex-Governor  Bal- 
derson  of  Kansas."  It  related  that  he  was  ever 
the  "  friend  to  the  friendless  ";  that,  "  with  all 
his  worldly  honours,  he  was  modest  and  un- 
assuming ";  that  "  he  had  his  faults,  as  who  of 
us  have  not,"  but  that  he  was  "  honest,  tried  and 
true  " ;  and  the  memorial  closed  with  the  words : 
"  Heaven's  angel  gained  is  Roosevelt's  hero 
lost." 


XIV 
The  Passing  of  Priscilla  Winthrop 

WHAT  a  dreary  waste  life  in  our  office 
must  have  been  before  Miss  Larra- 
bee  came  to  us  to  edit  a  society  page 
for  the  paper !  To  be  sure  we  had  known  in  a 
vague  way  that  there  were  lines  of  social  cleav- 
age in  the  town;  that  there  were  whist  clubs 
and  dancing  clubs  and  women's  clubs,  and 
in  a  general  way  that  the  women  who  com- 
posed these  clubs  made  up  our  best  society,  and 
that  those  benighted  souls  beyond  the  pale  of 
these  clubs  were  out  of  the  caste.  We  knew 
that  certain  persons  whose  names  were  always 
handed  in  on  the  lists  of  guests  at  parties  were 
what  we  called  "  howling  swells."  But  it  re- 
mained for  Miss  Larrabee  to  sort  out  ten  or  a 
dozen  of  these  "  howling  swells  "  who  belonged 
to  the  strictest  social  caste  in  town,  and  call  them 
"  howling  dervishes."  Incidentally  it  may  be  said 
that  both  Miss  Larrabee  and  her  mother  were 
217 


2i 8  In  Our  Town 

dervishes,  but  that  did  not  prevent  her  from 
making  sport  of  them.  From  Miss  Larrabee  we 
learned  that  the  high  priestess  of  the  howling 
dervishes  of  our  society  was  Mrs.  Mortimer 
Conklin,  known  by  the  sisterhood  of  the  mosque 
as  Priscilla  Winthrop.  We  in  our  office  had 
never  heard  her  called  by  that  name,  but  Miss 
Larrabee  explained,  rather  elaborately,  that  un- 
less one  was  permitted  to  speak  of  Mrs.  Conk- 
lin thus,  one  was  quite  beyond  the  hope  of  a 
social  heaven. 

In  the  first  place,  Priscilla  Winthrop  was 
Mrs.  Conklin's  maiden  name;  in  the  second 
place,  it  links  her  with  the  Colonial  Puritan 
stock  of  which  she  is  so  justly  proud — being 
scornful  of  mere  Daughters  of  the  Revolution 
— and  finally,  though  Mrs.  Conklin  is  a  grand- 
mother, her  maiden  name  seems  to  preserve  the 
sweet,  vague  illusion  of  girlhood  which  Mrs. 
Conklin  always  carries  about  her  like  the 
shadow  of  a  dream.  And  Miss  Larrabee  punc- 
tuated this  with  a  wink  which  we  took  to  be  a 
quotation  mark,  and  she  went  on  with  her  work. 
So  we  knew  we  had  been  listening  to  tlje  lan- 
guage used  in  the  temple. 


In  Our  Town  219 

Our  town  was  organised  fifty  years  ago  by 
Abolitionists  from  New  England,  and  twenty 
years  ago,  when  Alphabetical  Morrison  was 
getting  out  one  of  the  numerous  boom  editions 
of  his  real  estate  circular,  he  printed  an  histori- 
cal article  therein  in  which  he  said  that  Priscilla 
Winthrop  was  the  first  white  child  born  on  the 
town  site.  Her  father  was  territorial  judge, 
afterward  member  of  the  State  Senate,  and  after 
ten  years  spent  in  mining  in  the  far  West,  died 
in  the  seventies,  the  richest  man  in  the  State.  It 
was  known  that  he  left  Priscilla,  his  only  child, 
half  a  million  dollars  in  government  bonds. 

She  was  the  first  girl  in  our  town  to  go  away 
to  school.  Naturally,  she  went  to  Oberlin,  fa- 
mous in  those  days  for  admitting  coloured  stu- 
dents. But  she  finished  her  education  at  Vassar, 
and  came  back  so  much  of  a  young  lady  that  the 
town  could  hardly  contain  her.  She  married 
Mortimer  Conklin,  took  him  to  the  Centennial 
on  a  wedding  trip,  came  home,  rebuilt  her 
father's  house,  covering  it  with  towers  and  min- 
arets and  steeples,  and  scroll-saw  fretwork,  and 
christened  it  Winthrop  Hall.  She  erected  a 
store  building  on  Main  Street,  that  Mortimer 


220  In   Our  Town 

might  have  a  luxurious  office  on  the  second  floor, 
and  then  settled  down  to  the  serious  business  of 
life,  which  was  building  up  a  titled  aristocracy 
in  a  Kansas  town. 

The  Conklin  children  were  never  sent  to  the 
public  schools,  but  had  a  governess,  yet  Morti- 
mer Conklin,  who  was  always  alert  for  the  call, 
could  not  understand  why  the  people  never 
summoned  him  to  any  office  of  honour  or  trust. 
He  kept  his  brass  signboard  polished,  went 
to  his  office  punctually  every  morning  at  ten 
o'clock,  and  returned  home  to  dinner  at  five, 
and  made  clients  wait  ten  minutes  in  the  outer 
office  before  they  could  see  him — at  least  so  both 
of  them  say,  and  there  were  no  others  in  all  the 
years.  He  shaved  every  day,  wore  a  frock- 
coat  and  a  high  hat  to  church — where  for  ten 
years  he  was  the  only  male  member  of  the  Epis- 
copalian flock — and  Mrs.  Conklin  told  the 
women  that  altogether  he  was  a  credit  to  his  sex 
and  his  family — a  remark  which  was  passed 
about  ribaldly  in  town  for  a  dozen  years,  though 
Mortimer  Conklin  never  knew  that  he  was  the 
subject  of  a  town  joke.  Once  he  rebuked  a  man 
in  the  barber  shop  for  speaking  of  feminine  ex- 


In  Our  Town  221 

travagance,  and  told  the  shop  that  he  did  not 
stint  his  wife,  that  when  she  asked  him  for 
money  he  always  gave  it  to  her  without  ques- 
tion, and  that  if  she  wanted  a  dress  he  told  her 
to  buy  it  and  send  the  bill  to  him.  And  we  are 
such  a  polite  people  that  no  one  in  the  crowded 
shop  laughed — until  Mortimer  Conklin  went 
out. 

Of  course  at  the  office  we  have  known  for 
twenty-five  years  what  the  men  thought  of  Mor- 
timer, but  not  until  Miss  Larrabee  joined  the 
force  did  we  know  that  among  the  women  Mrs. 
Conklin  was  considered  an  oracle.  Miss  Larra- 
bee said  that  her  mother  has  a  legend  that  when 
Priscilla  Winthrop  brought  home  from  Boston 
the  first  sealskin  sacque  ever  worn  in  town  she 
gave  a  party  for  it,  and  it  lay  in  its  box  on  the 
big  walnut  bureau  in  the  spare  room  of  the 
Conklin  mansion  in  solemn  state,  while  seventy- 
five  women  salaamed  to  it.  After  that  Priscilla 
Winthrop  was  the  town  authority  on  sealskins. 
When  any  member  of  the  town  nobility  had  a 
new  sealskin,  she  took  it  humbly  to  Priscilla 
Winthrop  to  pass  judgment  upon  it.  If  Pris- 
cilla said  it  was  London-dyed,  its  owner  pranced 


222  In  Our  Town 

away  on  clouds  of  glory;  but  if  she  said  it  was 
American-dyed,  its  owner  crawled  away  in 
shame,  and  when  one  admired  the  disgraced 
garment,  the  martyred  owner  smiled  with  re- 
signed sweetness  and  said  humbly:  "Yes — but 
it's  only  American-dyed,  you  know." 

No  dervish  ever  questioned  the  curse  of  the 
priestess.  The  only  time  a  revolt  was  imminent 
was  in  the  autumn  of  1884  when  the  Conklins 
returned  from  their  season  at  Duxbury,  Mas- 
sachusetts, and  Mrs.  Conklin  took  up  the  car- 
pets in  her  house,  heroically  sold  all  of  them  at 
the  second-hand  store,  put  in  new  waxed  floors 
and  spread  down  rugs.  The  town  uprose  and 
hooted;  the  outcasts  and  barbarians  in  the 
Methodist  and  Baptist  Missionary  Societies 
rocked  the  Conklin  home  with  their  merriment, 
and  ten  dervishes  with  set  faces  bravely  met  the 
onslaughts  of  the  savages ;  but  among  themselves 
in  hushed  whispers,  behind  locked  doors,  the 
faithful  wondered  if  there  was  not  a  mistake 
some  place.  However,  when  Priscilla  Winthrop 
assured  them  that  in  all  the  best  homes  in  Bos- 
ton rugs  were  replacing  carpets,  their  souls  were 
at  peace. 


In  Our  Town  223 

All  this  time  we  at  the  office  knew  nothing 
of  what  was  going  on.  We  knew  that  the  Conk- 
lins  devoted  considerable  time  to  society;  but 
Alphabetical  Morrison  explained  that  by  calling 
attention  to  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Conklin  had 
prematurely  grey  hair.  He  said  a  woman  with 
prematurely  grey  hair  was  as  sure  to  be  a  social 
leader  as  a  spotted  horse  is  to  join  a  circus.  But 
now  we  know  that  Colonel  Morrison's  view  was 
a  superficial  one,  for  he  was  probably  deterred 
from  going  deeper  into  the  subject  by  his  dislike 
for  Mortimer  Conklin,  who  invested  a  quarter 
of  a  million  dollars  of  the  Winthrop  fortune 
in  the  Wichita  boom,  and  lost  it.  Colonel  Mor- 
rison naturally  thought  as  long  as  Conklin  was 
going  to  lose  that  money  he  could  have  lost  it 
just  as  well  at  home  in  the  "  Queen  City  of  the 
Prairies,"  giving  the  Colonel  a  chance  to  win. 
And  when  Conklin,  protecting  his  equities  in 
Wichita,  sent  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  of 
good  money  after  the  quarter  million  of  bad 
money,  Colonel  Morrison's  grief  could  find  no 
words;  though  he  did  find  language  for  his 
wrath.  When  the  Conklins  draped  their  Orien- 
tal rugs  for  airing  every  Saturday  over  the 


224  In  Our  Town 

veranda  and  portico  railings  of  the  house 
front,  Colonel  Morrison  accused  the  Conklins  of 
hanging  out  their  stamp  collection  to  let  the 
neighbours  see  it.  This  was  the  only  side  of  the 
rug  question  we  ever  heard  in  ow  office  until 
Miss  Larrabee  came;  then  she  cold  us  that  one 
of  the  first  requirements  of  a  howling  dervish 
was  to  be  able  to  quote  from  Priscilla  Win- 
throp's  Rug  book  from  memory.  The  Rug 
book,  the  China  book  and  the  Old  Furniture 
book  were  the  three  sacred  scrolls  of  the  sect. 

All  this  was  news  to  us.  However,  through 
Colonel  Morrison,  we  had  received  many  years 
ago  another  sidelight  on  the  social  status  of  the 
Conklins.  It  came  out  in  this  way:  Time  hon- 
oured custom  in  our  town  allows  the  children  of 
a  home  where  there  is  an  outbreak  of  social 
revelry,  whether  a  church  festival  or  a  meeting 
of  the  Cold-Nosed  Whist  Club,  to  line  up  with 
the  neighbour  children  on  the  back  stoop  or  in 
the  kitchen,  like  human  vultures,  waiting  to  lick 
the  ice-cream  freezer  and  to  devour  the  bits  of 
cake  and  chicken  salad  that  are  left  over.  Colo- 
nel Morrison  told  us  that  no  child  was  ever 
known  to  adorn  the  back  yard  of  the  Conklin 


In  Our  Town  225 

home  while  a  social  cataclysm  was  going  on, 
but  that  when  Mrs.  Morrison  entertained  the 
Ladies*  Literary  League,  children  from  the 
holy  Conklin  family  went  home  from  his  back 
porch  with  their  faces  smeared  with  chicken  cro- 
quettes and  their  hands  sticky  with  jellycake. 

This  story  never  gained  general  circulation  in 
town,  but  even  if  it  had  been  known  of  all  men 
it  would  not  have  shaken  the  faith  of  the  dev- 
otees. For  they  did  not  smile  when  Priscilla 
Winthrop  began  to  refer  to  old  Frank  Hagan, 
who  came  to  milk  the  Conklin  cow  and  curry 
the  Conklin  horse,  as  "  Frangois,  the  man,"  or 
to  call  the  girl  who  did  the  cooking  and  general 
housework  "  Cosette,  the  maid,"  though  every 
one  of  the  dozen  other  women  in  town  whom 
"  Cosette,  the  maid  "  had  worked  for  knew  that 
her  name  was  Fanny  Ropes.  And  shortly  after 
that  the  homes  of  the  rich  and  the  great  over  on 
the  hill  above  Main  Street  began  to  fill  with 
Lisettes  and  Nanons  and  Fanchons,  and  Mrs. 
Julia  Neal  Worthington  called  her  girl  "  Gris- 
ette,"  explaining  that  they  had  always  had  a 
Grisette  about  the  house  since  her  mother  first 
went  to  housekeeping  in  Peoria,  Illinois,  and  it 


226  In  Our  Town 

sounded  so  natural  to  hear  the  name  that  they 
always  gave  it  to  a  new  servant.  This  story  came 
to  the  office  through  the  Young  Prince,  who 
chuckled  over  it  during  the  whole  hour  he  con- 
sumed in  writing  Ezra  Worthington's  obit- 
uary. 

Miss  Larrabee  says  that  the  death  of  Ezra 
Worthington  marks  such  a  distinct  epoch  in  the 
social  life  of  the  town  that  we  must  set  down 
here — even  if  the  narrative  of  the  Conklins  halts 
for  a  moment — how  the  Worthingtons  rose  and 
flourished.  Julia  Neal,  eldest  daughter  of 
Thomas  Neal — who  lost  the  "  O  "  before  his 
name  somewhere  between  the  docks  of  Dublin 
and  the  west  bank  of  the  Missouri  River — was 
for  ten  years  principal  of  the  ward  school  in 
that  part  of  our  town  known  as  "  Arkansaw," 
where  her  term  of  service  is  still  remembered 
as  the  "  reign  of  terror."  It  was  said  of  her 
then  that  she  could  whip  any  man  in  the  ward — 
and  would  do  it  if  he  gave  her  a  chance.  The 
same  manner  which  made  the  neighbours  com- 
plain that  Julia  Neal  carried  her  head  too  high, 
later  in  life,  when  she  had  money  to  back  it, 
gave  her  what  the  women  of  the  State  Federa- 


In  Our  Town  227 

tion  called  a  "  regal  air."  In  her  early  thirties 
she  married  Ezra  Worthington,  bachelor, 
twenty  year  her  senior.  Ezra  Worthington  was 
at  that  time,  had  been  for  twenty  years  before, 
and  continued  to  be  until  his  death,  proprietor 
of  the  Worthington  Poultry  and  Produce  Com- 
mission Company.  He  was  owner  of  the  stock- 
yards, president  of  the  Worthington  State  Bank, 
vice-president,  treasurer  and  general  manager  of 
the  Worthington  Mercantile  Company,  and 
owner  of  five  brick  buildings  on  Main  Street. 
He  bought  one  suit  of  clothes  every  five  years 
whether  he  needed  it  or  not,  never  let  go  of  a 
dollar  until  the  Goddess  of  Liberty  on  it  was 
black  in  the  face,  and  died  rated  "  Aa  $350,- 
ooo "  by  all  the  commercial  agencies  in  the 
country.  And  the  first  thing  Mrs.  Worthing- 
ton did  after  the  funeral  was  to  telephone  to  the 
bank  and  ask  them  to  send  her  a  hundred 
dollars. 

The  next  important  thing  she  did  was  to  put 
a  heavy,  immovable  granite  monument  over  the 
deceased  so  that  he  would  not  be  restless,  and 
then  she  built  what  is  known  in  our  town  as  the 
Worthington  Palace.  It  makes  the  Markley 


228  In  Our  Town 

mansion  which  cost  $25,000  look  like  a  barn. 
The  Worthingtons  in  the  lifetime  of  Ezra  had 
ventured  no  further  into  the  social  whirl  of  the 
town  than  to  entertain  the  new  Presbyterian 
preacher  at  tea,  and  to  lend  their  lawn  to  the 
King's  Daughters  for  a  social,  sending  a  bill 
in  to  the  society  for  the  eggs  used  in  the  coffee 
and  the  gasoline  used  in  heating  it. 

To  the  howling  dervishes  who  surrounded 
Priscilla  Winthrop  the  Worthingtons  were  as 
mere  Christian  dogs.  It  was  not  until  three  years 
after  Ezra  Worthington's  death  that  the  glow 
of  the  rising  Worthington  sun  began  to  be  seen 
in  the  Winthrop  mosque.  During  those  three 
years  Mrs.  Worthington  had  bought  and  read 
four  different  sets  of  the  best  hundred  books,  had 
consumed  the  Chautauqua  course,  had  prepared 
and  delivered  for  the  Social  Science  Club,  which 
she  organised,  five  papers  ranging  in  subject 
from  the  home  life  of  Rameses  I.,  through  a 
Survey  of  the  Forces  Dominating  Michael  An- 
gelo,  to  the  Influence  of  Esoteric  Buddhism  on 
Modern  Political  Tendencies.  More  than  that, 
she  had  been  elected  president  of  the  City  Feder- 
ation of  Clubs,  and,  being  a  delegate  to  the  Na- 


In  Our  Town  229 

tional  Federation  from  the  State,  was  talked  of 
for  the  State  Federation  Presidency.  When  the 
State  Federation  met  in  our  town,  Mrs.  Wor- 
thington  gave  a  reception  for  the  delegates  in 
the  Worthington  Palace,  a  feature  of  which  was 
a  concert  by  a  Kansas  City  organist  on  the  new 
pipe-organ  which  she  had  erected  in  the  music- 
room  of  her  house,  and  despite  the  fact  that  the 
devotees  of  the  Priscilla  shrine  said  that  the 
crowd  was  distinctly  mixed  and  not  at  all  repre- 
sentative of  our  best  social  grace  and  elegance, 
there  is  no  question  but  that  Mrs.  Worthing- 
ton's  reception  made  a  strong  impression  upon 
the  best  local  society.  The  fact  that,  as  Miss 
Larrabee  said,  "  Priscilla  Winthrop  was  so  nice 
about  it,"  also  may  be  regarded  as  ominous, 
But  the  women  who  lent  Mrs.  Worthington  the 
spoons  and  forks  for  the  occasion  were  de- 
lighted, and  formed  a  phalanx  about  her, 
which  made  up  in  numbers  what  it  might  have 
lacked  in  distinction.  Yet  while  Mrs.  Worthing- 
ton was  in  Europe  the  faithful  routed  the  pha- 
lanx, and  Mrs.  Conklin  returned  from  her  sum- 
mer in  Duxbury  with  half  a  carload  of  old 
furniture  from  Harrison  Sampson's  shop  and 


230  In  Our  Town 

gave    a    talk   to   the   priestesses    of   the   inner 
temple  on  "  Heppelwhite  in  New  England." 

Miss  Larrabee  reported  the  affair  for  our 
paper,  giving  the  small  list  of  guests  and  the 
long  line  of  refreshments. — which  included  alli- 
gator-pear salad,  right  out  of  the  Smart  Set 
Cook  Book.  Moreover,  when  Jefferson  ap- 
'  peared  in  Topeka  that  fall,  Priscilla  Winthrop, 
who  had  met  him  through  some  of  her  Dux- 
bury  friends  in  Boston,  invited  him  to  run  down 
for  a  luncheon  with  her  and  the  members  of  the 
royal  family  who  surrounded  her.  It  was  the 
proud  boast  of  the  defenders  of  the  Winthrop 
faith  in  town  that  week,  that  though  twenty-four 
people  sat  down  to  the  table,  not  only  did  all 
the  men  wear  frock-coats — not  only  did  Uncle 
Charlie  Haskins  of  String  Town  wear  the  old 
Winthrop  butler's  livery  without  a  wrinkle  in 
it,  and  with  only  the  faint  odour  of  mothballs 
to  mingle  with  the  perfume  of  the  roses — but 
(and  here  the  voices  of  the  followers  of  the 
prophet  dropped  in  awe)  not  a  single  knife  or 
fork  or  spoon  or  napkin  was  borrowed!  After 
that,  when  any  of  the  sisterhood  had  occasion  to 
speak  of  the  absent  Mrs.  Worthington,  whose 


In   Our  Town  231 

house  was  filled  with  new  mahogany  and  brass 
furniture,  they  referred  to  her  as  the  Duchess  of 
Grand  Rapids,  which  gave  them  much  comfort. 
But  joy  is  short-lived.  When  Mrs.  Worth- 
ington  came  back  from  Europe  and  opened  her 
house  to  the  City  Federation,  and  gave  a  col- 
oured lantern-slide  lecture  on  "  An  evening  with 
the  Old  Masters,"  serving  punch  from  her  own 
cut-glass  punch  bowl  instead  of  renting  the  hand- 
painted  crockery  bowl  of  the  queensware  store, 
the  old  dull  pain  came  back  into  the  hearts  of 
the  dwellers  in  the  inner  circle.  Then  just  in  the 
nick  of  time  Mrs.  Conklin  went  to  Kansas  City 
and  was  operated  on  for  appendicitis.  She  came 
back  pale  and  interesting,  and  gave  her  club  a 
paper  called  "  Hospital  Days,"  fragrant  with 
iodoform  and  Henley's  poems.  Miss  Larrabee 
told  us  that  it  was  almost  as  pleasant  as  an 
operation  on  one's  self  to  hear  Mrs.  Conklin 
tell  about  hers.  And  they  thought  it  was  rather 
brutal — so  Miss  Larrabee  afterward  told  us — 
when  Mrs.  Worthington  went  to  the  hospital 
one  month,  and  gave  her  famous  Delsarte  lec- 
ture course  the  next  month,  and  explained  to 
the  women  that  if  she  wasn't  as  heavy  as  she 


232  In  Our  Town 

used  to  be  it  was  because  she  had  had  everything 
cut  out  of  her  below  the  windpipe.  It  seemed  to 
the  temple  priestesses  that,  considering  what  a 
serious  time  poor  dear  Priscilla  Winthrop  had 
gone  through,  Mrs.  Worthington  was  making 
light  of  serious  things. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  formal  rebellion 
of  Mrs.  Worthington,  Duchess  of  Grand 
Rapids,  and  known  of  the  town's  nobility  as  the 
Pretender,  began  with  the  hospital  contest.  The 
Pretender  planted  her  siege-guns  before  the 
walls  of  the  temple  of  the  priestess,  and  prepared 
for  business.  The  first  manoeuvre  made  by  the 
beleaguered  one  was  to  give  a  luncheon  in  the 
mosque,  at  which,  though  it  was  midwinter,  fresh 
tomatoes  and  fresh  strawberries  were  served, 
and  a  real  authoress  from  Boston  talked  upon 
John  Fiske's  philosophy  and,  in  the  presence 
of  the  admiring  guests,  made  a  new  kind  of 
salad  dressing  for  the  fresh  lettuce  and  toma- 
toes. Thirty  women  who  watched  her  forgot 
what  John  Fiske's  theory  of  the  cosmos  is,  and 
thirty  husbands  who  afterward  ate  that  salad 
dressing  have  learned  to  suffer  and  be  strong. 
But  that  salad  dressing  undermined  the  faith  of 


In  Our  Town  233 

thirty  mere  men — raw  outlanders  to  be  sure — 
in  the  social  omniscience  of  Priscilla  Winthrop. 
Of  course  they  did  not  see  it  made;  the  spell  of 
the  enchantress  was  not  over  them ;  but  in  their 
homes  they  maintained  that  if  Priscilla  Win- 
throp didn't  know  any  more  about  cosmic  phil- 
osophy than  to  pay  a  woman  forty  dollars  to 
make  a  salad  dressing  like  that — and  the  whole 
town  knows  that  was  the  price — the  vaunted 
town  of  Duxbury,  Massachusetts,  with  its  old 
furniture  and  new  culture,  which  Priscilla  spoke 
of  in  such  repressed  ecstasy,  is  probably  no 
better  than  Manitou,  Colorado,  where  they 
get  their  Indian  goods  from  Buffalo,  New 
York. 

Such  is  the  perverse  reasoning  of  man.  And 
Mrs.  Worthington,  having  lived  with  consider- 
able of  a  man  for  fifteen  years,  hearing  echoes 
of  this  sedition,  attacked  the  fortification  of  the 
faithful  on  its  weakest  side.  She  invited  the 
thirty  seditious  husbands  with  their  wives  to  a 
beefsteak  dinner,  where  she  heaped  their  plates 
with  planked  sirloin,  garnished  the  sirloin  with 
big,  fat,  fresh  mushrooms,  and  topped  off  the 
meal  with  a  mince  pie  of  her  own  concoction, 


234  In  Our  Town 

which  would  make  a  man  leave  home  to  follow 
it.  She  passed  cigars  at  the  table,  and  after  the 
guests  went  into  the  music-room  ten  old  men 
with  ten  old  fiddles  appeared  and  contested  with 
old-fashioned  tunes  for  a  prize,  after  which  the 
company  danced  four  quadrilles  and  a  Virginia 
reel.  The  men  threw  down  their  arms  going 
home  and  went  over  in  a  body  to  the  Pretender. 
But  in  a  social  conflict  men  are  mere  non-com- 
batants, and  their  surrender  did  not  seriously 
injure  the  cause  that  they  deserted. 

The  war  went  on  without  abatement.  During 
the  spring  that  followed  the  winter  of  the  beef- 
steak dinner  many  skirmishes,  minor  engage- 
ments, ambushes  and  midnight  raids  occurred. 
But  the  contest  was  not  decisive.  For  purposes 
of  military  drill,  the  defenders  of  the  Winthrop 
faith  formed  themselves  into  a  Whist  Club. 
The  Whist  Club  they  called  it,  just  as  they 
spoke  of  Priscilla  Winthrop's  gowns  as  "  the 
black  and  white  one,"  "  the  blue  brocade," 
"  the  white  china  silk,"  as  if  no  other  black  and 
white  or  blue  brocade  or  white  china  silk  gowns 
had  been  created  in  the  world  before  and  could 
not  be  made  again  by  human  hands.  So,  in  the 


In  Our  Town  235 

language  of  the  inner  sanctuary,  there  was  "  The 
Whist  Club,"  to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  pos- 
sible human  Whist  Clubs  under  the  stars. 
When  summer  came  the  Whist  Club  fled  as  birds 
to  the  mountains — save  Priscilla  Winthrop,  who 
went  to  Duxbury,  and  came  home  with  a  brass 
warming-pan  and  a  set  of  Royal  Copenhagen 
china  that  were  set  up  as  holy  objects  in  the 
temple. 

But  Mrs.  Worthington  went  to  the  National 
Federation  of  Women's  Clubs,  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  the  women  there  who  wore  clothes 
from  Paris,  began  tracing  her  ancestry  back 
to  the  Maryland  Calverts — on  her  mother's 
side  of  the  house — brought  home  a  membership 
in  the  Daughters  of  the  Revolution,  the  Colonial 
Dames  and  a  society  which  referred  to  Charles 
I.  as  "  Charles  Martyr,"  claimed  a  Stuart  as 
the  rightful  king  of  England,  affecting  to  scorn 
the  impudence  of  King  Edward  in  sitting  on 
another's  throne.  More  than  this,  Mrs.  Worth- 
ington had  secured  the  promise  of  Mrs.  Ellen 
Vail  Montgomery,  Vice-President  of  the  Na- 
tional Federation,  to  visit  Cliff  Crest,  as  Mrs. 
Worthington  called  the  Worthington  mansion, 


236  In  Our  Town 

and  she  turned  up  her  nose  at  those  who  wor- 
shipped under  the  towers,  turrets  and  min- 
arets of  the  Conklin  mosque,  and  played  the 
hose  of  her  ridicule  on  their  outer  wall  that  she 
might  have  it  spotless  for  a  target  when  she  got 
ready  to  raze  it  with  her  big  gun. 

The  week  that  Ellen  Vail  Montgomery  came 
to  town  was  a  busy  one  for  Miss  Larrabee. 
We  turned  over  the  whole  fourth  page  of  the 
paper  to  her  for  a  daily  society  page,  and 
charged  the  Bee  Hive  and  the  White  Front  Dry 
Goods  store  people  double  rates  to  put  their 
special  sale  advertisements  on  that  page  while 
the  "  National  Vice,"  as  the  Young  Prince  called 
her,  was  in  town.  For  the  "  National  Vice  " 
brought  the  State  President  and  two  State  Vices 
down,  also  four  District  Presidents  and  six  Dis- 
trict Vices,  who,  as  Miss  Larrabee  said,  were 
monsters  "  of  so  frightful  a  mien,  that  to  be 
hated  need  but  to  be  seen."  The  entire  delega- 
tion of  visiting  stateswomen — Vices  and  Virtues 
and  Beatitudes  as  we  called  them — were  enter- 
tained by  Mrs.  Worthington  at  Cliff  Crest,  and 
there  was  so  much  Federation  politics  going  on 
in  our  town  that  the  New  York  Sun  took  five 


In  Our  Town  237 

hundred  words  about  it  by  wire,  and  Colonel 
Alphabetical  Morrison  said  that  with  all  those 
dressed-up  women  about  he  felt  as  though  he 
was  living  in  a  Sunday  supplement. 

The  third  day  of  the  ghost-dance  at  Cliff 
Crest  was  to  be  the  day  of  the  big  event — as  the 
office  parlance  had  it.  The  ceremonies  began  at 
sunrise  with  a  breakfast  to  which  half  a  dozen 
of  the  captains  and  kings  of  the  besieging  host 
of  the  Pretender  were  bidden.  It  seems  to  have 
been  a  modest  orgy,  with  nothing  more  aston- 
ishing than  a  new  gold-band  china  set  to  dis- 
hearten the  enemy.  By  ten  o'clock  Priscilla  Win- 
throp  and  the  Whist  Club  had  recovered  from 
that;  but  they  had  been  asked  to  the  luncheon 
— the  star  feature  of  the  week's  round  of  gayety. 
It  is  just  as  well  to  be  frank,  and  say  that  they 
went  with  fear  and  trembling.  Panic  and  terror 
were  in  their  ranks,  for  they  knew  a  crisis  was 
at  hand.  It  came  when  they  were  "  ushered  into 
the  dining-hall,"  as  our  paper  so  grandly  put  it, 
and  saw  in  the  great  oak-beamed  room  a  table 
laid  on  the  polished  bare  wood — a  table  laid  for 
forty-eight  guests,  with  a  doily  for  every  plate, 
and  every  glass,  and  every  salt-cellar,  and — here 


238  In  Our  Town 

the  mosque  fell  on  the  heads  of  the  howling^, 
vishes — forty-eight  soup-spoons,  forty-eight  sii 
ver-handled  knives  and  forks ;  forty-eight  butter- 
spreaders,  forty-eight  spoons,  forty-eight  salad 
forks,  forty-eight  ice-cream  spoons,  forty-eight 
coffee  spoons.  Little  did  it  avail  the  beleaguered 
party  to  peep  slyly  under  the  spoon-handles — 
the  word  "  Sterling  "  was  there,  and,  more  than 
that,  a  large,  severely  plain  "  W  "  with  a  crest 
glared  up  at  them  from  every  piece  of  silver. 
The  service  had  not  been  rented.  They  knew 
their  case  was  hopeless.  And  so  they  ate  in  peace. 
When  the  meal  was  over  it  was  Mrs.  Ellen 
Vail  Montgomery,  in  her  thousand-dollar  gown, 
worshipped  by  the  eyes  of  forty-eight  women, 
who  put  her  arm  about  Priscilla  Winthrop 
and  led  her  into  the  conservatory,  where  they 
had  "  a  dear,  sweet  quarter  of  an  hour,"  as 
Mrs.  Montgomery  afterward  told  her  hostess. 
In  that  dear,  sweet  quarter  of  an  hour  Priscilla 
Winthrop  Conklin  unbuckled  her  social  sword 
and  handed  it  to  the  conqueror,  in  that  she 
agreed  absolutely  with  Mrs.  Montgomery  that 
Mrs.  Worthington  was  "  perfectly  lovely,"  that 
she  was  "  delighted  to  be  of  any  service  "  to 


In  Our  Town  239 

Mrs.  Worthington ;  that  Mrs.  Conklin  "  was 
sure  no  one  else  in  our  town  was  so  admirably 
qualified  for  "  National  Vice  "  as  Mrs.  Worth- 
ington, and  that  "  it  would  be  such  a  privilege  " 
for  Mrs.  Conklin  to  suggest  Mrs.  Worthing- 
ton's  name  for  the  office.  And  then  Mrs.  Mont- 
gomery, "  National  Vice "  and  former  State 
Secretary  for  Vermont  of  the  Colonial  Dames, 
kissed  Priscilla  Winthrop  and  they  came  forth 
wet-eyed  and  radiant,  holding  each  other's  hands. 
When  the  company  had  been  hushed  by  the 
magic  of  a  State  Vice  and  two  District  Virtues, 
Priscilla  Winthrop  rose  and  in  the  sweetest 
Kansas  Bostonese  told  the  ladies  that  she 
thought  this  an  eminently  fitting  place  to  let  the 
visiting  ladies  know  how  dearly  our  town  es- 
teems its  most  distinguished  townswoman,  Mrs. 
Julia  Neal  Worthington,  and  that  entirely  with- 
out her  solicitation,  indeed  quite  without  her 
knowledge,  the  women  of  our  town — and  she 
hoped -of  our  beloved  State — were  ready  now  to 
announce  that  they  were  unanimous  in  their  wish 
that  Mrs.  Worthington  should  be  National 
Vice-President  of  the  Federation  of  Women's 
Clubs,  and  that  she,  the  speaker,  had  entered  the 


240  In  Our  Town 

contest  with  her  whole  soul  to  bring  this  end  to 
pass.  Then  there  was  hand-clapping  and  hand- 
kerchief waving  and  some  tears,  and  a  little 
good,  honest  Irish  hugging,  and  in  the  twilight 
two  score  of  women  filed  down  through  the 
formal  garden  of  Cliff  Crest  and  walked  by 
twos  and  threes  into  the  town. 

There  was  the  usual  clatter  of  home-going 
wagons;  lights  winked  out  of  kitchen  windows; 
the  tinkle  of  distant  cow-bells  was  in  the  air;  on 
Main  Street  the  commerce  of  the  town  was 
gently  ebbing,  and  man  and  nature  seemed  ut- 
terly oblivious  of  the  great  event  that  had  hap- 
pened. The  course  of  human  events  was  not 
changed;  the  great  world  rolled  on,  while  Pris- 
cilla  Winthrop  went  home  to  a  broken  shrine  to 
sit  among  the  potsherds. 


XV 
«  And  Yet  a  Fool " 

THE  exchanges  that  come  to  a  country 
newspaper  like  ours  become  familiar 
friends  as  the  years  pass.  One  who 
reads  these  papers  regularly  comes  to  know 
them  even  in  their  wrappers,  though  to  an  un- 
practiced  eye  the  wrappers  seem  much  alike. 
But  when  he  has  been  poking  his  thumb  through 
the  paper  husks  in  a  certain  pile  every  morning 
for  a  score  of  years,  he  knows  by  some  sort  of 
prescience  when  a  new  paper  appears ;  and,  v 
when  the  pile  looks  odd  to  him,  he  goes  hunting 
for  the  stranger  and  is  not  happy  until  he  has 
found  it. 

One  morning  this  spring  the  stranger  stuck 
its  head  from  the  bottom  of  the  exchange  pile, 
and  when  we  had  glanced  at  the  handwriting 
of  the  address  and  at  the  one-cent  stamp  on  the 
cover  we  knew  it  had  been  mailed  to  us  by  some- 
241 


242  In  Our  Town 

one  besides  the  publisher.  For  the  newspaper 
"  hand  "  is  as  definite  a  form  of  writing  as  the 
legal  hand  or  the  doctor's.  The  paper  proved 
to  be  an  Arizona  newspaper  full  of  saloon  ad- 
vertising, restaurant  cards,  church  and  school 
meeting  notices,  local  items  about  the  sawmill 
and  the  woman's  club,  land  notices  and  paid 
items  from  wool  dealers.  On  the  local  page  in 
the  midst  of  a  circle  of  red  ink  was  the  an- 
nouncement of  the  death  of  Horace  P.  Samp- 
son. Every  month  we  get  notices  like  this,  of 
the  deaths  of  old  settlers  who  have  gone  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth,  but  this  notice  was  peculiar 
in  that  it  said: 

"  One  year  ago  our  lamented  townsman  de- 
posited with  the  firm  of  Cross  &  Kurtz,  the 
popular  undertakers  and  dealers  in  Indian  goods 
and  general  merchandise,  $100  to  cover  his 
funeral  expenses,  and  another  hundred  to  pro- 
vide that  a  huge  boulder  be  rolled  over  his 
grave  on  which  he  desired  the  following  un- 
usual inscription:  *  Horace  P.  Sampson,  Born 

Dec.  6,  1840,  and  died .  "And  is  not  this 

a  rare  fellow,  1?*>  lord  ?  He's  good  at  anything 
and  yet  a  fool."  *  * 


In  Our  Town  243 

We  handed  the  paper  to  Alphabetical  Mor- 
rison, who  happened  to  be  In  the  office  at  the 
time,  pawing  through  the  discarded  exchanges 
in  the  waste-basket,  looking  for  his  New  York 
Sun,  and,  after  Colonel  Morrison  had  read  the 
item,  he  began  drumming  with  his  fingernails 
on  the  chair-seat  between  his  knees.  His  eyes 
were  full  of  dreams  and  no  one  disturbed  him 
as  he  looked  off  into  space.  Finally  he  sighed: 

"  And  yet  a  fool — a  motley  fool !  Poor  old 
Samp — kept  it  up  to  the  end !  I  take  it  from  the 
guarded  way  the  paper  refers  to  his  faults,  '  as 
who  of  us  have  not,'  that  he  died  of  the 
tremens  or  something  like  that."  The  Colonel 
paused  and  smiled  just  perceptibly,  and  went 
on :  "  Yet  I  see  that  he  was  a  good  fellow  to  the 
end.  I  notice  that  the  Shriners  and  the  Elks  and 
the  Eagles  and  the  Hoo-hoos  buried  him.  Nary 
an  insurance  order  in  his!  Poor  old  Samp;  he 
certainly  went  all  the  gaits !  " 

We  suggested  that  Colonel  Morrison  write 
something  about  the  deceased  for  the  paper, 
but  though  the  Colonel  admitted  that  he  knew 
Sampson  "  like  a  book,"  there  was  no  persuad- 
ing Morrison  to  write  the  obituary. 


?-44  In  Our  Town 

"  After  some  urging  and  by  way  of  com- 
promise," he  said,  "  I'm  perfectly  willing  to 
give  you  fellows  the  facts  and  let  you  fix  up 
what  you  please." 

Because  the  reporters  were  both  busy  we 
called  the  stenographer,  and  had  the  Colonel's 
story  taken  down  as  he  told  it — to  be  rewritten 
into  an  obituary  later.  And  it  is  what  he  said 
and  not  what  we  printed  about  Sampson  that  is 
worth  putting  down  here.  The  Colonel  took 
the  big  leather  chair,  locked  his  hands  behind 
his  head,  and  began : 

"  Let  me  see.  Samp  was  born,  as  he  says, 
December  6,  1840,  in  Wisconsin,  and  came  out 
to  Kansas  right  after  the  war  closed.  He  was 
going  to  college  up  there,  and  at  the  second  call 
for  troops  he  led  the  whole  senior  class  into 
forming  a  company,  and  enlisted  before  gradua- 
tion and  fought  from  that  time  on  till  the  close 
of  the  war.  He  was  a  captain,  I  think,  but  you 
never  heard  him  called  that.  When  he  came 
here  he'd  been  admitted  to  the  bar  and  was  a 
good  lawyer — a  mighty  good  lawyer  for  that 
time — and  had  more  business  'n  a  bird  pup  with 
a  gum-shoe.  He  was  just  a  boy  then,  and,  like 


"  He  made  a  lot  of  money  and  blew  it  in  " 


In  Our  Town  245 

all  boys,  he  enjoyed  a  good  time.  He  drank 
more  or  less  in  the  army — they  all  did  's  far 
as  that  goes — but  he  kept  it  up  in  a  desultory 
way  after  he  came  here,  as  a  sort  of  accessory 
to  his  main  business  of  life,  which  was  being  a 
good  fellow. 

"  And  he  was  a  good  fellow — an  awful  good 
fellow.  We  were  all  young  then;  there  wasn't 
an  old  man  on  the  town-site  as  I  remember  it. 
We  use  to  load  up  the  whole  bunch  and  go 
hunting — closing  up  the  stores  and  taking  the 
girls  along — and  did  not  show  up  till  midnight. 
Samp  would  always  have  a  little  something 
to  take  under  his  buggy-seat,  and  we  would 
wet  up  and  sing  coming  home,  with  the  beds 
of  the  spring-wagons  so  full  of  prairie  chickens 
and  quail  that  they  jolted -out  at  every  rut. 
Samp  would  always  lead  the  singing — being 
just  a  mite  more  lubricated  than  the  rest  of  us, 
and  the  girls  thought  he  was  all  hunkey  dorey 
— as  they  used  to  say. 

"  He  made  a  lot  of  money  and  blew  it  in  at 
Jim  Thomas's  saloon,  buying  drinks,  playing 
stud  poker,  betting  on  quarter  horses,  and 
lending  it  out  to  fellows  who  helped  him  forget 


246  In  Our  Town 

they'd  borrowed  it.  And — say  in  two  or  three 
years,  after  the  chicken-hunting  set  had  married 
off,  and  begun  in  a  way  to  settle  down — Samp 
took  up  with  the  next  set  coming  on;  he 
married  and  got  the  prettiest  girl  in  town. 
We  always  thought  that  he  married  only  be- 
cause he  wanted  to  be  a  good  fellow  and  did 
not  wish  to  be  impolite  to  the  girl  he'd  paired 
off  with  in  the  first  crowd.  Still  he  didn't 
stay  home  nights,  and  once  or  twice  a  year — 
say,  election  or  Fourth  of  July — he  and  a  lot  of 
other  young  fellows  would  go  out  and  tip  over 
all  the  board  sidewalks  in  town,  and  paint  funny 
signs  on  the  store  buildings  and  stack  beer  bot- 
tles on  the  preacher's  front  porch,  and  raise  Ned 
generally.  And  the  fellows  of  his  age,  who 
owned  the  stores  and  were  in  nights,  would  say 
to  Samp  when  they  saw  him  coming  down  about 
noon  the  next  day: 

"  *  Go  it  when  you're  young  Samp,  for  when 
you're  old  you  can't.'  And  he  would  wink  at 
'em,  give  'em  ten  dollars  apiece  for  their  dam- 
ages and  jolly  his  way  down  the  street  to  his 
office. 

"  Now,  you  mustn't  get  the  idea  that  Samp 


In  Our  Town  247 

was  the  town  drunkard,  for  he  never  was.  He 
was  just  a  good  fellow.  When  the  second  set 
of  young  fellows  outgrew  him  and  settled  down, 
he  picked  up  with  the  third,  and  his  wife's 
brown  alpaca  began  to  be  noticed  more  or  less 
among  the  women.  But  Samp's  practice  didn't 
seem  to  fall  off — it  only  changed.  He  didn't 
have  so  much  real  estate  lawing  and  got  more 
criminal  practice.  Gradually  he  became  a  crim- 
inal lawyer,  and  his  fame  for  wit  and  eloquence 
extended  over  all  the  State.  When  a  cow- 
puncher  got  in  trouble  his  folks  in  the  East 
always  gave  Samp  a  big  fee  to  get  the  boy  out, 
and  he  did  it.  When  he  went  to  any  other 
county-seat  besides  our  own  to  try  a  case,  the 
fellows — and  you  know  who  the  fellows  are  in  a 
town — the  fellows  knew  that  while  Samp  was 
in  town  there  would  be  something  going  on 
with  '  fireworks  in  the  evening.'  For  he  was  a 
great  fellow  for  a  good  time,  and  the  dining- 
room  girls  at  the  hotel  used  to  giggle  in  the 
kitchen  for  a  week  after  he  was  gone  at  the 
awful  things  he  would  say  to  'em.  He  knew 
more  girls  by  their  first  names  than  a  drum- 


mer.'' 


248  In  Our  Town 

Colonel  Morrison  chuckled  and  crossed  his 
fat  legs  at  the  ankles  as  he  continued,  after 
lighting  the  cigar  we  gave  him : 

*  Well,  along  in  the  late  seventies  we  fellows 
that  he  started  out  with  got  to  owning  our  own 
homes  and  getting  on  in  the  world.  That  was 
the  time  when  Samp  should  have  been  grubbing 
at  his  law  books,  but  nary  a  grub  for  him.  He 
was  playing  horse  for  dear  life.  And  right  there 
the  fellows  all  left  him  behind.  Some  were 
buying  real  estate  for  speculation;  some  run- 
ning for  office;  some  starting  a  bank;  and  others 
lending  money  at  two  per  cent,  a  month,  and 
leading  in  the  prayer-meeting.  So  Samp  kind  of 
hitched  up  his  ambition  and  took  the  slack  out  of 
his  habits  for  a  few  months  and  went  to  the  legis- 
lature. They  say  that  he  certainly  did  have  a 
good  time,  though,  when  he  got  there.  They 
remember  that  session  yet  up  there,  and  call 
it  the  year  of  the  great  flood,  for  the  nights 
they  were  filled  with  music,  as  the  poet  says,  and 
from  the  best  accounts  we  could  get  the  days 
were  devoid  of  ease  also,  and  how  Mrs.  Samp- 
son stood  it  the  women  never  could  find  out, 
for,  of  course,  she  must  have  known  all  about 


In  Our  Town  249 

it,  though  he  wouldn't  let  her  come  near  Topeka. 
He  began  to  get  pursy  and  red-faced,  and 
was  clicking  it  off  with  his  fifth  set  of  young 
fellows.  It  took  a  big  slug  of  whisky  to  set 
off  his  oratory,  but  when  he  got  it  wound  up  he 
surely  could  pull  the  feathers  out  of  the  bird 
of  freedom  to  beat  scandalous.  But  as  a  stump 
speaker  you  weren't  always  sure  he'd  fill  the 
engagement.  He  could  make  a  jury  blubber 
and  clench  its  fists  at  the  prosecuting  attorney, 
yet  he  didn't  claim  to  know  much  law,  and  he 
did  turn  over  all  the  work  in  the  Supreme  Court 
to  his  partner,  Charley  Hedrick.  Then,  when 
Charley  was  practising  before  the  Supreme 
Court  and  wasn't  here  to  hold  him  down, 
Samp  would  get  out  and  whoop  it  up  with 
the  boys,  quote  Shakespeare  and  make  stump 
speeches  on  drygoods  boxes  at  midnight,  and 
put  his  arms  around  old  Marshal  Furgeson's 
neck  and  tell  him  he  was  the  blooming  flower 
of  chivalry.  Also  women  made  a  fool  of  him — 
more  or  less. 

"Where  was  I?"  asked  Colonel  Morrison 
of  the  stenographer  when  she  had  finished 
sharpening  her  pencil.  "Oh,  yes,  along  in  the 


25°  In  Our  Town 

eighties  came  the  boom,  and  Samp  tried  to  get 
in  it  and  make  some  money.  He  seems  to  have 
tried  to  catch  up  with  us  fellows  of  his  age, 
and  he  began  to  plunge.  He  got  in  debt,  and, 
when  the  boom  broke,  he  was  still  living  in  a 
rented  house  with  the  rent  ten  months  behind; 
his  partnership  was  gone  and  his  practice  was 
cut  down  to  joint-keepers,  gamblers,  and  the 
farmers  who  hadn't  heard  the  stories  of  his 
financial  irregularities  that  were  floating  around 
town. 

*  Yet  his  wife  stuck  to  him,  forever  explain- 
ing to  my  wife  that  he  would  be  all  right  when 
he  settled  down.  But  he  continued  to  soak  up  a 
little — not  much,  but  a  little.  He  never  was 
drunk  in  the  daytime,  but  I  remember  there 
used  to  be  mornings  when  his  office  smelled 
pretty  sour.  I  had  an  office  next  to  his  for  a  while 
and  he  used  to  come  in  and  talk  to  me  a  good 
deal.  The  young  fellows  around  town  whom 
he  would  like  to  run  with  were  beginning  to 
find  him  stupid,  and  the  old  fellows — except 
me — were  busy  and  he  had  no  one  to  loaf  with. 
He  decided,  I  remember,  several  times  to  brace 
up,  and  once  he  kept  white  shirts,  cuffs  and 


In  Our  Town  251 

collars  on  for  nearly  a  year.  But  when  Harri- 
son was  elected,  he  filled  up  from  his  shoes  to  his 
hat  and  didn't  go  home  for  three  days.  One 
day  after  that,  when  he  had  gone  back  to  his 
flannel  shirts  and  dirty  collars,  he  was  sitting  in 
my  office  looking  at  the  fire  in  the  big  box  stove 
when  he  broke  out  with: 

"  '  Alphabetical — what's  the  matter  with  me, 
anyway?  This  town  sends  men  to  Congress; 
it  makes  Supreme  Court  judges  of  others.  It 
sends  fellows  to  Kansas  City  as  rich  bankers. 
It  makes  big  merchants  out  of  grocery  clerks. 
Fortune  just  naturally  flirts  with  everyone  in 
town — but  never  a  wink  do  I  get.  I  know  and 
you  know  I'm  smarter  than  those  jays.  I  can 
teach  your  Congressman  economics,  and  your 
Supreme  judge  law.  I  can  think  up  more 
schemes  than  the  banker,  and  can  beat  the  mer- 
chant in  any  kind  of  a  game  he'll  name.  I  don't 
lie  and  I  don't  steal  and  I  ain't  stuck  up.  What's 
the  matter  with  me,  anyway? ' 

"  And  of  course,"  mused  Colonel  Morrison 
as  he  relighted  the  butt  of  his  cigar,  "  of  course 
I  had  to  lie  to  him  and  say  I  didn't  know.  But 
I  did.  We  all  knew.  He  was  too  much  of  a 


252  In  Our  Town 

good  fellow.  His  failure  to  get  on  bothered 
him  a  good  deal,  and  one  day  he  got  roaring 
full  and  went  up  and  down  town  telling  people 
how  smart  he  was.  Then  his  pride  left  him,  and 
he  let  his  whiskers  grow  frowsy  and  used  his 
vest  for  a  spittoon,  and  his  eyes  watered  too 
easily  for  a  man  still  in  his  forties. 

"  He  went  West  a  dozen  years  ago,  about 
the  time  of  Cleveland's  second  election,  expect- 
ing to  get  a  job  in  Arizona  and  grow  up  with  the 
country.  His  wife  was  mighty  happy,  and  she 
told  our  folks  and  the  rest  of  the  women 
that  when  Horace  got  away  from  his  old  as- 
sociates in  this  town  she  knew  that  he  would  be 
all  right.  Poor  Myrtle  Kenwick,  the  prettiest 
girl  you  ever  saw  along  in  the  sixties — and  she 
was  through  here  not  long  ago  and  stayed  with 
my  wife  and  the  girls — a  broken  old  woman, 
going  back  to  her  kinfolk  in  Iowa  after  she  left 
him.  Poor  Myrtle !  I  wonder  where  she  is.  I 
see  this  Arizona  paper  doesn't  say  anything 
about  her." 

Colonel  Morrison  read  over  the  item  again, 
and  smiled  as  he  proceeded: 

"  But  it  does  say  that  he  occupied  many  places 


In  Our  Town  253 

of  honour  and  trust  in  his  former  home  in 
Kansas,  which  seems  to  indicate  that  whisky 
made  old  Samp  a  liar  as  well  as  a  loafer  at  last. 
My,  my!  "  sighed  the  Colonel  as  he  rose  and 
put  the  paper  on  the  desk.  "  My,  my!  What  a 
treacherous  serpent  it  is!  It  gave  him  a  good 
time — literally  a  hell  of  a  good  time.  And  he 
was  a  good  fellow — literally  a  damned  good 
fellow — *  damned  from  here  to  eternity/  as  your 
man  Kipling  says.  God  gave  him  every  talent. 
He  might  have  been  a  respected,  useful  citizen ; 
no  honour  was  beyond  him;  but  he  put  aside 
fame  and  worth  and  happiness  to  play  with 
whisky.  My  Lord,  just  think  of  it !  "  exclaimed 
the  Colonel  as  he  reached  for  his  hat  and  put 
up  his  glasses.  "  And  this  is  how  whisky  served 
him :  brought  him  to  shame,  wrecked  his  home, 
made  his  name  a  by-word,  and  lured  him  on  and 
on  to  utter  ruin  by  holding  before  him  the 
phantom  of  a  good  time.  What  a  pitiful,  heart- 
breaking mocker  it  is !  "  He  sighed  a  long  sigh 
as  he  stood  in  the  door  looking  up  at  the  sky 
with  his  hands  clasped  behind  him,  and  said 
half  audibly  as  he  went  down  the  steps :  "  And 
whoso  is  deceived  thereby  is  not  wise — not 


254  In   Our  Town 

wise.    '  He's    good    at    anything — and    yet    a 
fool ' !  " 

That  was  what  Colonel  Morrison  gave  the 
stenographer.  What  we  made  for  the  paper  is 
entirely  uninteresting  and  need  not  be  printed 
here. 


XVI 

A   Kansas   "  Childe  Roland  " 

ONE  of  the  wisest  things  ever  said  about 
the  newspaper  business  was  said  by 
the  late  J.  Sterling  Morton,  of  Ne- 
braska. He  declared  that  a  newspaper's  ene- 
mies were  its  assets,  and  the  newspaper's  lia- 
bilities its  friends.  This  is  particularly  true  of 
a  country  newspaper.  For  instance,  witness  the 
ten-years'  struggle  of  our  own  little  paper  to 
get  rid  of  the  word  "  Hon."  as  a  prefix  to  the 
names  of  politicians.  Everyone  in  town  used  to 
laugh  at  us  for  referring  to  whippersnapper 
statesmen  as  "  Honourable  " ;  because  everyone 
in  town  knew  that  for  the  most  part  these 
whippersnappers  were  entirely  dishonourable.  It 
was  easy  enough  to  stop  calling  our  enemies 
"  Hon.,"  for  they  didn't  dare  to  complain;  but 
if  we  dropped  the  title  even  from  so  mangy  a 
man  as  Abner  Handy,  within  a  week  Charley 
255 


256  In  Our  Town 

Hedrick  would  happen  into  the  office  with 
twenty  or  thirty  dollars1  worth  of  legal  printing, 
and  after  doing  us  so  important  a  favour  would 
pause  before  going  out  to  say: 

"  Boys,  what  you  fellows  got  against  Ab 
Handy?  "  And  the  ensuing  dialogue  would  con- 
clude from  old  Charley:  "Well,  I  know — I 
know — but  Ab  likes  it,  and  it  really  isn't  much, 
and  I  know  he's  a  fool  about  it;  I  don't  care 
in  my  own  case,  but  if  you  can  do  it  I  kind 
of  wish  you  would.  Ab's  funny  that  way;  he's 
never  given  up.  He's  like  the  fellow  old  Brown- 
ing tells  about  who  has  *  august  anticipations, 
of  a  dim  splendour  ever  on  before,'  and  when 
you  fellows  quit  calling  him  '  Hon.'  it  makes 
him  blue." 

And  old  Charley  would  grow  purple  with  a 
big,  wheezy,  asthmatic  laugh,  and  shake  his 
great  six-foot  hulk  and  toddle  out  leaving  us 
vanquished.  For  though  the  whole  town  reviles 
Abner  Handy,  Charley  Hedrick  still  looks  after 
him. 

It  was  said  for  thirty  years  that  Handy  did 
old  Charley's  dirty  work  in  politics,  but  we  knew 
many  of  the  mean  things  that  Handy  did  were 


In  Our  Town  257 

unjustly  charged  to  Hedrick.  People  in  a  small 
community  are  apt  to  put  two  and  two  together 
and  make  five.  Much  of  the  talk  about  the 
alliance  between  Hedrick  and  Handy  is,  of 
course,  down-right  slander;  every  lawyer  who 
tries  lawsuits  for  forty  years  in  a  country  town 
is  bound  to  make  enemies  of  small-minded  peo- 
ple, many  of  whom  occupy  large  places  in  the 
community,  and  a  small-minded  man,  believing 
that  his  enemy  is  a  villain,  makes  up  his  facts  to 
suit  his  belief,  and  then  peddles  his  story.  It  is 
always  just  as  well  to  discount  the  home  stories 
on  an  old  lawyer  ninety-five  per  cent,  if  they  are 
bad;  and  seventy  per  cent,  if  they  are  good — for 
he  may  have  saved  the  fellow  who  is  telling 
them  from  the  penitentiary.  But  Abner  Handy 
was  never  enough  of  a  lawyer  to  come  within 
this  rule.  Indeed  they  used  to  say  that  he  was 
not  admitted  to  the  bar,  at  all,  but  that  when  he 
came  to  town,  in  1871,  he  erased  his  dead 
brother's  name  on  a  law  diploma  and  substi- 
tuted his  own.  Still,  he  practised  on  the  law — » 
as  Simon  Mehronay  used  to  say  of  Handy — 
and  for  twenty  years  carried  an  advertisement 
in  Eastern  farm  journals  proclaiming  that  his 


258  In  Our  Town 

specialty  was  Kansas  collections.  He  never  took 
as  a  fee  less  than  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the 
amount  he  collected.  That  was  the  advantage 
which  he  had  as  a  lawyer,  which  advantage  in- 
spired Colonel  Alphabetical  Morrison  to  pro- 
claim that  a  lawyer's  diploma  is  nothing  but  a 
license  to  steal;  upon  hearing  which  Charley 
Hedrick  sent  back  to  the  Colonel  the  retort  that 
it  would  take  two  legal  diplomas  working  day 
and  night  to  keep  up  with  the  Colonel's  more 
or  less  honest  endeavours. 

Now  Ab  Handy  was  a  lean  coyote,  who  was 
forever  licking  his  bruises,  and  some  ten  years 
later  he  tried  to  run  for  the  school  board  solely 
to  get  the  Colonel's  daughters  dismissed  as 
school-teachers.  It  was  his  boast  that  he  never 
forgot  a  foe;  and  for  twenty  years  after  Hedrick 
saved  Handy  from  going  to  jail  for  robbing  a 
cattleman  of  a  thousand  dollars  in  "  Red " 
Martin's  gambling-room,  the  only  good  thing 
the  town  knew  of  Handy  was  that  he  never 
forgot  a  friend. 

During  that  twenty  years  whenever,  to  fur- 
ther his  ends  in  a  primary  or  in  an  election, 
Charley  Hedrick  needed  the  votes  of  the  rough 


in  Our  Town  259 

element  that  gathered  about  our  little  town,  Ab- 
ner  Handy,  card-sharper  and  jack-leg  lawyer, 
would  go  forth  into  the  byways  and  alleys  and 
gather  them  in.  For  this  service,  when  Hedrick 
carried  the  county — which  was  about  four  times 
out  of  five — Handy  was  rewarded  by  being  put 
on  the  delegation  to  the  State  convention.  Thus 
he  made  his  beginning  in  State  politics.  The 
second  time  that  he  attended  a  State  convention 
Handy  swelled  up  in  his  Sunday  clothes,  and  by 
reason  of  his  slight  acquaintance  with  the  ma- 
nipulators of  State  politics,  began  to  patronise 
the  other  members  of  our  delegation — good, 
honest  men,  whose  contempt  for  him  at  home 
was  unspeakable;  but  when  they  huddled  like 
sheep  in  the  strange  crowd  at  the  convention 
they  often  accepted  Handy  as  a  guide  in  im- 
portant matters.  In  talking  with  the  home 
delegation  Handy  very  soon  began  speaking  of 
the  convention  leaders  familiarly  as  "  Jim  "  and 
44  Dick  "  and  44  Tawm  "  and  <4  Bill,'1  and  some- 
times Handy  brought  one  of  these  dignitaries  to 
the  rooms  of  our  delegation  and  introduced  him 
to  our  people  with  a  grand  flourish.  Every  time 
the  legislature  met,  Ab  Handy  was  a  clerk  in 


260  in  Our  Town 

it,  and,  if  he  was  a  clerk  of  an  important  com- 
mittee like  the  railroad  committee  or  the  com- 
mittee on  the  calendar,  he  invariably  came  home 
with  a  few  hundred  dollars,  three  suits  of  clothes 
and  a  railroad  pass.  No  one  but  Charley  Hed- 
rick  could  live  with  him  for  six  months  after- 
ward. 

It  was  when  he  returned  from  one  of  these 
profitable  sessions  that  Abner  Handy  and  Nora 
Sinclair  were  married.  The  affinity  between 
them  was  this :  his  good  clothes  and  proud  man- 
ner caught  her;  and  her  social  position  caught 
him.  Everyone  in  town  knew,  however,  that 
Nora  Sinclair  had  been  too  smart  for  Handy. 
She  had  him  hooked  through  the  gills  before  he 
knew  that  he  was  more  than  nibbling  at  the 
bait.  The  town  concurred  with  Colonel  Morri- 
son— our  only  townsman  who  travelled  widely 
in  those  days — when  he  put  it  succinctly:  "  Ab 
Handy  is  Nora  Sinclair's  last  call  for  the  din- 
ing-car." 

Her  influence  on  Abner  Handy  and  his  life 
was  such  that  it  is  necessary  to  record  some- 
thing of  the  kind  of  a  woman  she  was  before 
he  met  her.  A  woman  of  the  right  sort  might 


In   Our  Town  261 

have  made  a  man  of  Handy,  even  that  late  in 
life.  Strong,  good  women  have  made  weak  men 
fairly  strong,  but  such  women  were  never  girls 
like  Nora.  She  was  a  nice  enough  little  girl  until 
she.  became  boy-struck — as  our  vernacular  puts 
it.  Her  mother  thought  this  development  of  the 
child  was  "  so  cute,"  and  told  callers  about  the 
boys  who  came  to  see  Nora — before  she  was 
twelve.  In  those  days,  and  in  some  old-fashioned 
families  in  our  town,  little  girls  were  asked  to 
run  out  to  play  when  the  neighbours  had  to  be 
discussed.  But  Mrs,  Sinclair  claimed  Nora  was 
"  neither  sugar  nor  salt  nor  anybody's  honey," 
and  everything  was  talked  over  before  the  child. 
We  knew  at  the  office  from  Colonel  Morrison 
that  his  little  girls  did  not  play  at  the  Sinclairs'. 
Her  mother  put  long  dresses  and  picture  hats 
upon  her  and  pushed  her  out  into  society,  and 
the  whole  town  knew  that  Nora  was  a  mature 
woman,  in  all  her  instincts,  by  the  time  she  was 
sixteen.  Her  mother,  moreover,  was  manifestly 
proud  that  the  child  wasn't  "  one  of  those  long- 
legged,  gangling  torn-boy  girls,  who  seem  so 
backward  "  and  wear  pigtails  and  chew  slate 
pencils  and  dream. 


262  In  Our  Town 

The  gilded  youths  who  boarded  at  the  Hotel 
Metropole  began  to  notice  her.  That  pleased 
her  mother  also,  and  she  said  to  the  mothers  of 
other  little  girls  of  Nora's  age  who  were  climb- 
ing fences  and  wiping  dishes :  "  You  know  Nora 
is  so  popular  with  the  gentlemen."  When 
the  girl  was  seventeen  she  was  engaged.  She 
kept  a  town  fellow  and  had  a  college  fellow. 
She  acquired  a  "  gentleman  friend  "  in  Kansas 
City  who  gave  her  expensive  presents.  These 
her  mother  took  great  joy  in  displaying,  and 
never  objected  when  he  stayed  after  eleven 
o'clock;  for  she  thought  he  was  "  such  a  good 
catch "  and  such  a  "  swell  young  man."  But 
Nora  shooed  him  off  the  front  porch  in  the 
summer  following,  because  he  objected  to  her 
having  two  or  three  other  eleven  o'clock  fellows. 
She  said  he  was  "  selfish,  and  would  not  let  her 
have  a  good  time."  At  nineteen  she  knew  more 
about  matters  that  were  none  of  her  business 
than  most  women  know  on  their  wedding  day, 
and  the  boys  said  that  she  was  soft.  Every  time 
that  Nora  left  town  she  came  back  with  two  or 
three  correspondents.  She  perfumed  her  station- 
ery, used  a  seal,  adopted  all  the  latest  frills,  and 


In  Our  Town  263 

learned  to  write  an  angular  hand.  At  twenty  she 
was  going  with  the  young  married  set,  and  was 
invited  out  to  the  afternoon  card  clubs.  She  was 
known  as  a  dashing  girl  at  this  time,  and  travel- 
ling men  in  three  States  knew  about  her.  Her 
mother  used  to  send  personal  items  to  our  office 
telling  of  their  exalted  business  positions  and  an- 
nouncing their  visits  to  the  Sinclair  home.  There 
was  more  or  less  talk  about  Nora  in  a  quiet  way, 
but  her  mother  said  that  "  it  is  because  the 
other  girls  don't  know  how  to  wear  their  clothes 
as  well  as  Nora  does,"  and  that  "  when  a  girl 
has  a  fine  figure — which  few  enough  girls  in  this 
town  have,  Heaven  knows — why,  she  is  a  fool 
if  she  doesn't  make  the  most  of  herself." 

Then,  gradually,  Nora  went  to  seed.  She  be- 
came a  faded,  hard-faced  woman,  and  all  the 
sisters  in  town  warned  their  brothers  against 
her.  She  was  invited  out  only  when  there  was  a 
crowd.  She  took  up  with  the  boys  of  the 
younger  set,  and  the  married  women  of  her  own 
age  called  her  the  kidnapper.  She  was  a  social 
joke.  About  once  a  year  a  strange  man  would 
show  up  in  her  parlour,  and  she  kept  up  the 
illusion  about  being  engaged.  But  in  the  office 


264  In  Our  Town 

we  shared  the  town's  knowledge  that  her  harp 
was  on  the  willows.  She  was  massaging  her 
face  at  twenty-six  and  her  mother  was  sniffing 
at  the  town  and  saying  that  there  were  no  social 
advantages  to  be  had  here.  She  and  the  girl 
went  to  the  Lakes  every  summer,  and  Nora  al- 
ways came  home  declaring  that  she  had  had  the 
time  of  her  life,  and  that  she  met  so  many  lovely 
gentlemen.  But  that  was  all  there  was  to  it,  and 
in  the  end  it  was  Abner  Handy  or  no  one. 

After  their  wedding,  Nora  and  Abner 
Handy  set  about  the  business  of  making  politics 
pay.  That  is  a  difficult  thing  to  do  in  a  country 
town,  where  every  voter  is  a  watchdog  of  the 
county  and  city  treasuries.  Abner  gave  up  his 
gambling,  he  and  his  wife  joined  all  the  lodges 
in  town,  and  she  dragged  him  into  that  coterie 
of  people  known  as  Society.  She  joined  a 
woman's  club,  and  was  always  anxious  to  be 
appointed  on  the  soliciting  committee  when  the 
women  had  any  public  work  to  do ;  so  when  the 
library  needed  books,  or  the  trash  cans  at  the 
street  corners  needec  paint,  or  the  park  trees 
needed  trimming,  or  the  new  hospital  needed  an 
additional  bed,  or  the  band  needed  new  uni- 


In  Our  Town  265 

forms,  Mrs.  Handy  might  be  seen  on  the  streets 
with  two  or  three  women  of  a  much  better  social 
status  than  she  had,  making  it  clear  that  she  was 
a  public-spirited  woman  and  that  she  moved  in 
the  best  circles.  Whereupon  Abner  Handy  got 
work  in  the  courthouse — as  a  deputy,  or  as  a 
clerk,  or  as  an  under-sheriff,  or  as  a  juror — and 
when  the  legislature  met  he  went  to  Topeka  as 
a  clerk. 

No  one  knew  how  they  lived,  but  they  did 
live.  Every  two  years  they  gave  a  series  of  par- 
ties, and  the  splendour  of  these  festivals  made 
the  town  exclaim  in  one  voice:  "  Well,  how  do 
they  do  it?  "  But  Mrs.  Handy,  who  was  steam- 
ing the  wrinkles  out  of  her  face,  and  assuming 
more  or  less  kittenish  airs  in  her  late  thirties, 
never  offered  the  town  an  explanation.  "  Hers 
not  to  answer  why,  hers  not  to  make  reply,  hers 
but  to  do  and  dye  "  was  the  way  Colonel  Morri- 
son put  it  the  day  after  Mrs.  Handy  swooped 
down  into  Main  Street  with  a  golden  yellow  fin- 
ish on  her  hair.  She  walked  serenely  between 
Mrs.  Frelinghuysen  and  Mrs.  Priscilla  Win- 
throp  Conklin.  They  were  begging  for  funds 
with  which  to  furnish  a  rest  room  for  farmers' 


266  In  Our  Town 

wives.  And  when  they  bore  down  on  our  office, 
Colonel  Morrison  folded  his  papers  in  his 
bosom  and  passed  them  on  the  threshold  as  one 
hurrying  to  a  fire  in  the  roof  of  his  own  house. 
It  was  interesting  to  observe,  when  the  Federa- 
tion Committee  called  on  us  that  day,  that  Mrs. 
Handy  did  all  the  talking.  She  was  as  full  of 
airs  and  graces  as  an  actress,  and  ogled  with 
her  glassy  eyes,  and  put  on  a  sweet  babyish  in- 
nocence of  the  ways  of  business  and  of  men — as 
though  men  were  a  race  apart,  greatly  to  be 
feared  because  they  ate  up  little  girls.  But  she 
got  her  dollar  before  she  left  the  office,  and 
George  Kirwin,  who  happened  to  be  in  the 
front  room  at  the  time  waiting  for  a  proof,  said 
he  thought  that  the  performance  and  the  new 
hair  were  worth  the  price. 

Five  years  passed  and  in  each  year  Mrs. 
Handy  had  found  some  artificial  way  of  delud- 
ing herself  that  she  was  cheating  time.  Then 
Charley  Hedrick,  who  needed  a  vote  in  the 
legislature,  and  was  too  busy  to  go  there  him- 
self, nominated  Abner  Handy  and  elected  him 
to  a  seat  in  the  lower  house.  The  thing  that 
Hedrick  needed  was  not  important — merely 


In  Our  Town  267 

the  creation  of  a  new  judicial  district  which 
would  remove  an  obnoxious  district  judge  in  an 
adjoining  county  from  our  district,  and  leave 
our  county  in  a  district  by  itself.  Hedrick  hated 
the  judge,  and  Hedrick  used  Handy's  vote  for 
trading  purposes  with  other  statesmen  desiring 
similar  small  matters  and  got  the  district  re- 
made as  he  desired  it. 

When  the  Handys  started  to  Topeka  for  the 
opening  of  the  session,  they  began  to  inflame 
with  importance  as  the  train  whistled  for  the 
junction  east  of  town,  and  by  the  time  they  ac- 
tually arrived  at  Topeka  they  were  so  highly 
swollen  that  they  could  not  get  into  a  boarding- 
house  door,  but  went  to  the  best  hotel,  and  en- 
gaged rooms  at  seven  dollars  a  day.  The  town 
gasped  for  two  days  and  then  began  to  laugh 
and  wink.  Two  weeks  after  their  arrival  at  the 
State  capital,  Abner  Handy  had  been  made 
chairman  of  the  joint  committee  on  the  calen- 
dar, second  member  of  the  judiciary  committee 
and  member  of  the  railroad  committee,  and 
Mrs.  Handy  had  established  credit  at  a  Topeka 
drygoods  store  and  was  going  it  blind.  She 
gave  her  hair  an  extra  dip,  and  used  to  come 


268  In   Our  Town 

sailing  down  the  corridors  of  the  hotel  in  gor- 
geous silk  house-gowns  with  ridiculous  trains, 
and  never  appeared  at  breakfast  without  her 
diamonds.  Before  the  session  was  well  under 
way  she  had  been  to  Kansas  City  to  have  her 
face  enameled  and  had  told  the  other  "  ladies 
of  the  hotel,"  as  the  wives  of  members  of  the 
legislature  stopping  at  the  hotel  were  called, 
that  Topeka  stores  offered  such  a  poor  selec- 
tion; she  confided  to  them  that  Mr.  Handy  al- 
ways wore  silk  nightshirts,  and  that  she  was 
unable  to  find  anything  in  town  that  he  would 
put  on.  She  regarded  herself  as  a  charmer,  and 
made  great  eyes  at  all  the  important  lobbyists, 
to  whom  she  put  on  her  baby  voice  and  manner 
and  said  that  she  thought  politics  were  just 
simply  awful,  and  added  that  if  she  were  a  man 
she  would  show  them  how  honest  a  politician 
could  be,  but  she  wasn't,  and  when  Abner  tried 
to  explain  it  to  her  it  made  her  head  ache,  and 
all  she  wanted  him  to  do  was  to  help  his  friends, 
and  she  would  add  coyly:  "I'm  going  to  see 
that  he  helps  you — whatever  he  does." 

Every  bill  that  had  a  dollar  in  it  was  held 
at  the  bottom  of  the  calendar  until  satisfac- 


In  Our  Town  269 

tory  arrangements  were  made  with  Abner 
Handy  and  his  friends.  When  the  legislative 
buccaneers  under  the  black  flag,  sailed  after  an 
insurance  company,  their  bill  remained  at  the 
bottom  of  the  calendar  in  one  house  or  the  other 
until  Ab  Handy  had  been  seen,  and  no  one 
could  find  out  why.  And  so,  in  spite  of  our  dis- 
like of  the  man,  our  paper  was  forced  to  ac- 
knowledge that  Handy  was  a  house  leader. 
Although  he  had  never  had  a  dozen  cases  above 
the  police  court,  he  came  back  at  the  end  of  the 
session  with  the  local  attorneyship  of  two  rail- 
roads, and  was  chairman  of  a  house  committee 
to  investigate  the  taxes  paid  by  the  railroads  in 
the  various  counties.  This  gave  him  a  year's 
work,  so  he  rented  an  office  in  the  Worthing- 
ton  block  and  hired  a  stenographer.  Of  course, 
we  knew  in  town  how  Ab  Handy  had  made  his 
money.  But  he  paid  so  many  of  his  old  debts, 
and  dispensed  so  many  favours  with  such  a 
lordly  hand,  that  it  was  hard  to  stir  local  senti- 
ment against  him.  He  donned  the  clothes  of  a 
"  prominent  citizen,"  and  in  discussing  public 
affairs  assumed  an  owlish  manner  that  im- 
pressed his  former  associates,  and  fooled  stupid 


270  In  Our  Town 

people,  who  began  to  believe  that  they  had  been 
harbouring  a  statesman  unawares.  But  Charley 
Hedrick  only  grinned  when  men  talked  to  him 
of  the  rise  of  Handy,  and  replied  to  the  com- 
plaints of  the  scrupulous  that  Ab  was  no  worse 
than  he  had  always  been,  and  if  he  was  making 
it  pay  better,  no  one  was  poorer  for  his  pros- 
perity but  Ab  himself,  and  added:  "Cer- 
tainly he  is  a  sincere  spender."  One  day  when 
Handy  appeared  on  the  street  in  a  particularly 
fiery  red  necktie,  Hedrick  got  him  in  a  crowd, 
and  began:  "Just  for  a  handful  of  silver  he 
left  us — just  for  a  riband  to  stick  in  his  coat." 
And  when  the  crowd  laughed  with  the  joker, 
Hedrick  continued  in  his  thick,  gravy-coated 
voice:  "Old  Browning's  the  boy.  You  fellows 
that  want  Shakespeare  can  have  him;  but  Ab 
here  knows  that  I  take  a  little  dash  of  Brown- 
ing in  mine.  Since  Ab's  got  to  be  a  statesman, 
he's  bought  all  of  Webster's  works  and  is 
learning  'em  by  heart.  But  " — and  here  Hed- 
rick chuckled  and  shook  his  fat  sides  before  let- 
ting out  the  joke  which  he  enjoyed  so  much — 
"  I  says  to  Ab :  as  old  Browning  says,  what 
does  *  the  fine  felicity  and  flower  of  wickedness  ' 


In  Our  Town  271 

like  you  need  with  Webster;  what  you  want  to 
commit  to  memory  is  the  penal  statutes."  And 
he  threw  back  his  head  and  gurgled  down  in  his 
abdomen,  while  the  crowd  roared  and  Handy 
showed  the  wool  in  his  teeth  with  a  dog-like 
grin. 

No  other  man  in  town  would  have  dared  that 
with  Handy  after  he  became  a  statesman ;  but  we 
figured  it  out  in  the  office  that  old  Charley  Hed- 
rick  was  merely  exhibiting  his  brand  on  Ab 
Handy  to  show  the  town  that  his  title  to  Handy 
was  still  good.  For  though  there  was  consid- 
erable of  the  King  Cole  about  Hedrick — in 
that  he  was  a  merry  old  soul — he  was  always 
king,  and  he  insisted  on  having  his  divine  right 
to  rule  the  politics  of  the  county  unquestioned. 
That  was  his  vanity  and  he  knew  it,  and  was 
not  ashamed  of  it. 

He  was  the  best  lawyer  in  the  State  in  those 
days,  and  one  of  the  best  in  the  West.  Ten 
months  in  the  year  he  paid  no  attention  to  poli- 
tics, pendulating  daily  between  his  house  and 
his  office.  Often,  being  preoccupied  with  his 
work,  he  would  go  the  whole  length  of  Main 
Street  speaking  to  no  one.  When  a  tangled  case 


272  In  Our  Town 

was  in  his  mind  he  would  enter  his  office  in  the 
morning,  roll  up  his  desk  top,  and  dig  into  his 
work  without  speaking  to  a  soul  until,  about  the 
middle  of  the  morning,  he  would  look  up  from 
his  desk  to  say  as  though  he  had  just  left  off 
speaking:  "Jim,  hand  me  that  32  Kansas  re- 
port over  there  on  the  table."  When  he  worked, 
law  books  sprang  up  around  him  and  sprawled 
over  his  desk  and  lay  half  open  on  chairs  and 
tables  near  him  until  he  had  found  his  point; 
then  he  would  get  up  and  begin  rollicking,  slam- 
ming books  together,  cleaning  up  his  debris  and 
playing  like  a  great  porpoise  with  the  litter  he 
had  made.  At  such  times — and,  indeed,  all  the 
time  unless  he  was  in  what  he  called  a  "  legal 
trance " — Hedrick  was  bubbling  with  good 
spirits,  and  when  he  left  his  office  for  politics  he 
could  get  out  in  his  shirt-sleeves  at  a  primary  and 
peddle  tickets,  or  nose  up  and  down  the  street  like 
a  fat  ferret  looking  for  votes.  So  when  Abner 
Handy  announced  that  he  desired  to  go  to  the 
State  Senate,  to  fill  an  unexpired  term  for  two 
years,  he  had  Hedrick  behind  him  to  give 
strength  and  respectability  to  his  candidacy.  Be- 
tween the  two  Handy  won.  That  was  before  the 


In   Our   Town  273 

days  of  reform,  when  it  was  supposed  to  be  con- 
siderable of  a  virtue  for  a  man  to  stand  by  his 
friend;  and,  being  a  lawyer,  Hedrick  naturally 
had  the  lawyer's  view  that  no  man  is  guilty  until 
the  jury  is  in,  and  its  findings  have  been  reviewed 
by  the  supreme  court. 

So  Senator  and  Mrs.  Senator  Handy — as  the 
town  put  it — went  to  Topeka  as  grandly  as 
ever  "  Childe  Roland  to  the  dark  tower  came  " 
— to  use  Hedrick's  language.  "  No  one  ever  has 
been  able  to  find  out  what  Roland  was  up  to 
when  he  went  to  the  dark  tower,  but,"  con- 
tinued Hedrick,  "  with  Ab  and  his  child-won- 
der it  will  be  different.  She  isn't  taking  all  that 
special  scenery  along  in  her  trunks  for  nothing. 
Ab  has  stumbled  on  to  this  great  truth — that 
clothes  may  not  make  the  man,  but  they  make 
the  crook !  " 

Handy  drew  a  dark  brow  when  he  became  a 
Senator,  and  made  a  point  of  trying  to  look 
ominous.  He  carried  his  chin  tilted  up  at  an 
angle  of  forty-five  degrees,  and  spoke  of  the 
most  obvious  things  with  an  air  of  mystery.  He 
never  admitted  anything;  his  closest  approach 
to  committing  himself  on  even  so  apparent  a 


274  In  Our  Town 

proposition  as  the  sunrise,  was  that  it  had  risen 
"  ostensibly  ";  he  became  known  to  the  report- 
ers as  "  Old  Ostensible." 

It  was  his  habit  to  tiptoe  around  the  Senate 
chamber  whispering  to  other  Senators,  and  then 
having  sat  down  to  rise  suddenly  as  though 
some  great  impulse  had  come  to  him  and  hurry 
into  the  cloakroom.  He  inherited  the  chair- 
manship of  the  railroad  committee,  and  all  em- 
ployees came  to  him  for  their  railroad  passes; 
so  he  was  the  god  of  the  blue-bottle  flies  of  poli- 
tics that  feed  on  legislatures,  and  buzz  pom- 
pously about  the  capitol  doing  nothing,  at  three 
dollars  a  day.  In  that  session  Handy  was  for 
the  "  peepul."  He  patronised  the  State  Ship- 
pers' Association,  and  told  their  committee  that 
he  would  give  them  a  better  railroad  bill  than 
they  were  asking.  His  practice  was  to  commit 
to  memory  a  bill  that  he  was  about  to  introduce 
and  then  go  into  his  committee-room,  when 
it  was  full  of  loafers,  and  pretend  to  dic- 
tate it  offhand  to  the  stenographer,  section  by 
section  without  pausing.  It  was  an  impressive 
performance,  and  gained  Handy  the  reputation 
of  being  brainy.  But  we  at  home  who  knew 


In  Our  Town  275 

Handy  were  not  impressed;  and,  in  our  office, 

( 

we  knew  that  he  was  the  same  Ab  Handy  who 
once  did  business  with  a  marked  deck;  who 
cheated  widows  and  orphans;  who  sold  bogus 
bonds;  who  got  on  two  sides  of  lawsuits,  and 
whose  note  was  never  good  at  any  bank  unless 
backed  by  blackmail. 

When  the  session  closed  Abner  Handy  came 
home,  a  statesman  with  views  on  the  tariff,  and 
ostentatiously  displayed  his  thousand-dollar 
bills.  The  Handys  spent  the  summer  in  At- 
lantic City,  and  Abner  came  home  wearing 
New  York  clothes  of  an  exaggerated  type,  and 
though  he  never  showed  it  in  our  town,  they 
used  to  say  that  he  put  on  a  high  hat  when  the 
train  whistled  for  Topeka.  Also  we  heard  that 
the  first  time  Mrs.  Handy  appeared  at  the  polit- 
ical hotel  in  her  New  York  regalia,  adorned 
with  spangles  and  beads  and  cords  and  tassels, 
the  "  ladies  of  the  hotel "  said  that  she  was 
"  fixed  up  like  a  Christmas  tree  " — a  remark 
that  we  in  the  office  coupled  with  Colonel  Mor- 
rison's reflection  when  he  spoke  of  Ab's  "  illus- 
trated vests."  At  the  meeting  of  the  State 
Federation  of  Woman's  Clubs,  Mrs.  Handy 


276  In  Our  Town 

first  flourished  her  lorgnette,  and  came  home 
with  her  wedding  ring  made  over  on  a  pattern 
after  the  prevailing  style.  About  this  time  she 
made  her  famous  remark  to  "  Aunt "  Martha 
Merrifield  that  she  didn't  think  it  proper  for  a 
woman  to  go  through  her  husband's  money  with 
too  sensitive  a  nose;  she  said  that  men  must 
work  and  women  must  weep,  and  that  she  for 
one  would  not  make  the  work  of  her  husband 
any  harder  by  criticising  it  with  her  silly  morals. 
As  for  Abner  Handy,  it  would  have  made 
little  difference  to  him  then  whether  she  or  any- 
one else  had  tried  to  check  his  career;  for  he  was 
cultivating  a  loud  tone  of  voice  and  a  regal  sweep 
to  his  arms.  He  always  signed  himself  on  hotel 
registers  Senator  Handy,  and  the  help  about  the 
Topeka  hotels  began  to  mark  him  for  their  hate, 
for  he  was  insolent  to  those  whom  he  regarded 
as  his  inferiors.  But  Colonel  Morrison  used  to 
say  that  he  wore  his  vest-buttons  off  crawling 
to  those  in  authority.  He  took  little  notice  of 
the  town.  He  referred  to  us  as  "  his  people  "  in 
a  fine  feudal  way,  and  went  about  town  with  his 
cigar  pointing  toward  his  hat  brim  and  his  eyes 
fixed  on  something  in  the  next  block.  He  be- 


Went  about  town  with  his  cigar  pointing  toward 
his  hat-brim 


In  Our  Town  277 

came  the  attorney  for  a  number  of  crooked  pro- 
motion schemes,  and  the  diamond  rings  on  his 
wife's  fingers  crowded  the  second  joint.  He 
had  telegraph  and  express  franks,  railway  and 
Pullman  passes  in  such  quantities  that  it  made 
his  coat  pocket  bulge  to  carry  them.  Often  he 
would  spread  out  these  evidences  of  his  shame 
on  his  office  table,  to  awe  the  local  politicians, 
and  in  so  far  as  they  could  influence  the  town 
opinion,  they  promulgated  the  idea  that  if  Ab 
Handy  was  a  scoundrel — and  of  course  he  was 
— he  was  a  smart  scoundrel.  So  he  came  to 
think  this  himself. 

Mrs.  Handy  threw  herself  into  the  work  of 
the  City  Federation  with  passionate  zeal.  Also 
she  kept  up  her  lodge  connections,  and  ex- 
plained to  the  women,  whom  she  considered  of 
a  higher  social  caste  than  the  lodge  women,  that 
she  was  "  doing  it  to  help  Mr.  Handy."  She 
did  a  little  church  work  for  the  same  reason,  but 
her  soul  was  in  the  Federation,  for  it  insured 
her  social  status  as  neither  lodge  nor  church 
could  do.  So  she  put  herself  under  the  protect- 
ing seal-lined  wing  of  Mrs.  Julia  Neal  Worth- 
ington  who  on  account  of  her  efforts  to  clean 


278  In  Our  Town 

the  streets  we  at  the  office  had  been  taught  by 
Colonel  Morrison  to  know  as  the  Joan  of  the 
trash-cans.  And  Miss  Larrabee,  our  society  re- 
porter, told  us  that  Mrs.  Handy  was  the  only 
woman  in  town  who  did  not  smile  into  her 
handkerchief  when  Mrs.  Worthington,  who 
had  trained  down  to  one  hundred  and  ninety- 
seven  pounds  five  and  three-eighths  ounces, 
gave  her  course  of  lectures  on  delsarte  before 
the  Federation. 

It  was  Mrs.  Handy  who  encouraged  Mrs. 
Worthington  to  open  her  salon.  But  as  there 
were  lodge  meetings  the  first  three  nights  in  the 
week,  and  prayer-meetings  in  the  middle  of  the 
week,  and  as  the  choirs  met  for  practice,  and 
the  whist  clubs  met  for  business  the  last  of  the 
week,  the  salon  did  not  seem  to  take  with  the 
town,  and  so  was  discontinued.  Then  Mrs. 
Worthington  and  Mrs.  Handy  sought  other 
fields.  And  the  first  field  they  stumbled  into  was 
the  courthouse  square.  For  fifty  years  the  farm- 
ers near  our  town  had  been  hitching  at  the  racks 
provided  by  the  county  commissioners.  But 
Mrs.  Worthington  decided  that  the  time  had 
come  for  a  change  and  that  the  town  was 


In  Our  Town  279 

getting  large  enough  to  take  down  the  hitching- 
racks.  So,  as  chairman  of  the  Municipal  Im- 
provement section  of  the  City  Federation,  Mrs. 
Worthington  began  war  on  the  hitching-racks. 
At  the  Federation  meetings  for  three  months 
there  were  reports  from  committees  appointed  to 
interview  the  councilmen ;  reports  of  committees 
to  interview  the  county  commissioners — who 
were  obdurate;  reports  of  committees  to  lease 
new  ground  for  the  hitching  rack  stands;  re- 
ports of  the  legal  committee ;  reports  of  the  sani- 
tary committee,  and  through  it  all  Mrs.  Worth- 
ington rose  at  every  meeting  and  declared  that 
the  hitching  racks  must  be  destroyed.  And  as 
she  was  rated  in  Bradstreet's  report  at  nearly 
half  a  million  dollars,  her  words  had  much 
force. 

The  town  was  beginning  to  stir  itself.  The 
merchants  were  with  the  women — because  the 
women  bought  the  dry  goods  and  groceries — 
and  we  forgot  about  the  farmers.  To  all  this 
milling  among  the  people  Handy  was  oblivious, 
for  he  was  stepping  like  a  hen  in  high  oats,  with 
his  eyes  on  a  seat  in  Congress.  Matters  of  mere 
local  importance  did  not  concern  him.  The  rail- 


280  In  Our  Town 

roads  were  for  him,  and  the  stars  in  their  courses 
seemed  to  him  to  be  pointing  his  way  to  Wash- 
ington. He  knew  of  the  hitching-rack  trouble 
only  when  he  had  to  go  with  Mrs.  Handy  to 
the  dinners  at  the  Worthington  home  given  to 
the  councilmen  and  their  wives,  who  were  luke- 
warm on  the  removal  proposition. 

In  the  spring  before  the  election  of  1902  Mrs. 
Worthington  had  a  majority  in  the  council,  and 
one  Saturday  night  the  hitching-racks  were  taken 
down  by  the  street  commissioner.  And  within  a 
week  the  town  was  on  the  verge  of  civil  war, 
for  the  farmers  of  the  county  rose  as  one  man 
and  demanded  the  blood  of  the  offenders.  But 
Abner  Handy  knew  nothing  of  the  disturbance. 
The  county  attorney  had  the  street  commissioner 
and  his  men  arrested  for  trespassing  upon 
county  property;  farmers  threatened  to  boycott 
the  town.  But  Abner  Handy's  ear  was  attuned 
to  higher  things.  Merchants  who  had  signed  the 
petition  asking  the  council  to  remove  the  racks 
began  to  denounce  the  removal  as  an  act  of 
treason.  But  Abner  Handy  conferred  with 
State  leaders  on  great  questions,  and  the  city 
attorney,  who  was  a  candidate  for  county  attor- 


In  Our  Town  281 

ney  that  fall,  did  not  dare  to  defend  the  street 
commissioner.  The  council  got  stubborn,  and 
Colonel  Morrison,  before  whom  as  justice  of 
the  peace  the  case  was  to  be  tried,  fearing  for 
the  professional  safety  of  his'three  daughters  in 
the  town  schools  and  his  four  daughters  in  the 
county  schools,  took  a  trip  to  his  wife's  people, 
and  told  us  he  was  enlisted  there  for  "  ninety 
days  or  during  the  war";  and  still  Abner 
Handy  looked  at  the  green  hills  afar. 

We  are  generally  accounted  by  ourselves  a 
fearless  newspaper;  but  here  we  admitted  that 
the  situation  required  discretion.  So  we  strad- 
dled it.  We  wrote  cautious  editorials  in  care- 
fully-balanced sentences  demanding  that  the 
people  keep  cool.  We  advised  both  sides  to 
realise  that  only  good  sense  and  judgment  would 
straighten  out  the  tangle.  We  demanded  that 
each  side  recognise  the  other's  rights  and  made 
both  sides  angry,  whereas  General  Durham,  of 
the  Statesman,  made  his  first  popular  stroke  in 
a  dozen  years  by  insisting,  in  double  leads  and 
italics,  that  the  tariff  on  hides  was  a  divine  in- 
stitution, and  that  humanity  called  upon  us  to 
hold  the  Philippines.  Charley  Hedrick  knew 


282  In   Our  Town 

better  than  anyone  else  in  town  what  a  tempest 
was  rising.  He  might  have  warned  Handy, 
but  he  did  not;  for  Handy  had  reached  a  point 
in  his  career  where  he  considered  that  a  mere 
county  boss  was  beneath  his  confidence.  More 
than  that,  Hedrick  had  refused  to  indorse 
Handy's  note  at  the  bank.  Handy  needed 
money,  and  being  a  shorn  lamb,  the  wind 
changed  in  his  direction  in  this  wise: 

In  the  midst  of  the  furore  that  week,  Mrs. 
Worthington  gave  an  evening  reception  for  the 
Federation  and  its  husbands  at  her  mansion,  fed 
them  sumptuously,  and,  after  Mrs.  Handy  had 
tapped  a  bell  for  silence,  Mrs.  Worthington  rose 
in  her  jet  and  passementerie  and  announced  that 
our  town  had  come  to  a  crisis  in  its  career;  that 
we  must  now  decide  whether  we  were  going  to 
be  a  beautiful  little  city  or  a  cow  pasture.  She 
said  that  beauty  was  as  much  an  essential  to 
life  as  money  and  that  we  would  be  better  off 
with  more  beauty  and  less  trade,  and  that  with 
the  courthouse  square  a  mudhole  the  town  could 
never  rise  to  any  real  consequence.  As  the  men 
of  the  town  seemed  to  be  moral  cowards,  she 
was  going  to  enlist  the  women  in  this  war,  and 


In  Our  Town  283 

as  the  first  step  in  her  campaign  she  proposed  to 
hire  the  Honourable  Abner  Handy  to  assist  the 
city  attorney  in  fighting  this  case,  and  as  a  re- 
tainer she  would  herewith  and  now  hand  him 
her  personal  check  for  five  hundred  dollars. 
Whereat  the  women  clapped  their  hands,  their 
husbands  winked  at  one  another,  and  u  there  was 
a  sound  of  revelry  by  night."  The  check  was  put 
on  a  silver  card-tray  by  Mrs.  Worthington  and 
set  on  a  table  in  the  midst  of  the  company  wait- 
ing for  Handy  to  come  forward  and  take  it. 
After  the  town  had  looked  at  the  check,  Mrs. 
Handy  seemed  to  cut  his  leashes  and  Abner  went 
after  it.  He  was  waiting  at  the  Worthington 
bank  the  next  morning  at  nine  o'clock  to  cash 
it — and  all  the  town  saw  that  also. 

Whereupon  the  town  grinned  broadly  that 
evening  when  it  read  in  the  Statesman  a  most 
laudatory  article  about  "  our  distinguished  fel- 
low-townsman." The  article  declared  that  it  was 
"  the  duty  of  the  hour  to  send  Honourable 
Abner  Handy  to  the  halls  of  Congress."  The 
Statesman  contended  that  "  Judge  Handy  had 
been  for  a  lifetime  the  defender  of  those  grand 
and  glorious  principles  of  freedom  and  protec- 


284  In  Our  Town 

tion  and  sound  money  for  which  the  Grand  Old 
Party  stood."  The  General  proclaimed  that  "  it 
shall  be  not  only  a  duty,  but  a  pleasure,  for  our 
citizens  to  lay  aside  all  petty  personal  and  fac- 
tional quarrels  and  rally  round  the  standard  of 
our  noble  leader  in  this  great  contest." 

If  Handy  ever  went  to  the  city  attorney's 
office  to  look  after  Mrs.  Worthington's  lawsuit, 
no  one  knew  it.  He  smiled  wisely  when  asked 
how  the  suit  was  progressing,  and  one  day  John 
Markley — who  during  the  life  of  Ezra  Worth- 
ington,  hated  him  with  a  ten-horse-power  hate 
and  loaded  it  onto  his  widow's  shoulders  and 
the  Worthington  bank  which  she  inherited — 
John  Markley  called  Handy  into  the  back  room 
of  the  Markley  Mortgage  Company,  and,  when 
Handy  passed  the  cashier's  window  going  out, 
he  cashed  a  check  signed  by  John  Markley  for 
a  thousand  dollars  on  which  was  inscribed  "  for 
legal  services  in  assisting  the  county  attorney  in 
the  hitching  rack  case." 

Handy  had  arrived  at  a  point  where  he  feared 
nothing.  He  seemed  to  believe  that  he  lived 
a  charmed  life  and  never  would  get  caught. 
He  bought  extra  copies  of  the  Statesman,  which 


In  Our  Town  285 

was  booming  him  for  Congress,  and  sent  them 
over  the  Congressional  District  by  the  thousands. 
He  went  to  Topeka  in  his  high  silk  hat  and 
his  New  York  clothes,  gave  out  interviews 
on  the  causes  of  the  flurry  in  the  money  market, 
and,  desiring  further  advertisement,  gave  a 
banquet  for  the  newspaper  men  of  the  capital 
which  cost  him  a  hundred  dollars.  So  he  be- 
came a  great  man.  At  home  he  assumed  a  pa- 
tronising air  to  the  people  about  Charley  Hed- 
rick.  And  one  night  in  Smith's  cigar  store,  just 
to  be  talking,  he  said  that  he  didn't  get  so  much 
of  Mrs.  Worthington's  money  as  people  thought, 
for  part  of  it  had  to  go  to  "  square  old  Charley 
Hedrick."  Hedrick  was  John  Markley's  attor- 
ney, and  he  had  taken  an  active  part  in  helping 
the  county  attorney  prosecute  the  street  commis- 
sioners. Naturally  Handy's  remark  stirred  up 
the  town.  It  was  two  weeks,  however,  in  getting 
to  Hedrick,  and  when  it  came  the  man  turned 
black  and  seemed  to  be  swallowing  a  pint  of 
emotional  language  before  he  spoke.  And  there 
Abner  Handy's  doom  was  sealed;  though  Hed- 
rick did  not  make  the  sentence  public. 

Now,  it  is  well  known  in  our  county  that  the 


286  In  Our  Town 

country  people  are  slow  to  wrath.  They  were 
two  months  finding  out  beyond  a  question  of 
doubt  that  Abner  Handy  had  accepted  Mrs. 
Worthington's  money  to  act  against  them,  but 
when  they  knew  this  there  was  no  hope  for 
Handy  among  them.  They  are  a  quiet  people, 
and  make  no  noise.  For  a  month,  only  Charley 
Hedrick  and  the  grocers  and  the  hardware 
men,  with  whom  the  farmers  trade,  knew  the 
truth  about  Handy's  standing  in  the  county. 
Hedrick  bided  his  time.  The  Handy  boom  for 
Congress  was  rolling  over  the  district,  and  the 
Statesman  italics  were  becoming  worn,  and  its 
exclamation  points  battered  in  the  service,  when 
one  day  Handy  stalked  up  to  Hedrick's  office, 
imperiously  beckoned  Hedrick  into  the  private 
room,  and  blurted  out: 

"  Charley,  I  got  to  have  some  more  money 
— need  it  in  my  business.  Can't  you  touch  old 
John  Markley  for  me  again — say  for  about  five 
hundred  on  that  hitching  rack  case?  Sister 
Worthington  is  kind  of  wanting  me  to  get 
action  on  her  case." 

Hedrick  was  dumb  with  rage,  but  Handy 
thought  it  was  acquiescence.  He  we&t  on : 


In   Our  Town  287 

"  You  just  step  down  to  the  bank  and  say : 
'  John,  I've  noticed  Ab  Handy  actin'  kind  of 
queer  about  that  hitching  rack  case.'  That's  all 
you  need  say,  and  pretty  soon  I'll  step  in  and 
say :  '  John,  I  don't  see  how  I  can  help  doin' 
something  for  Aunt  Julia  Worthington.'  And 
I  believe  I  can  tap  him  for  five  hundred  more 
easy  enough.  I  got  an  idea  he  is  mightily  in 
earnest  about  beating  her  in  that  suit." 

When  Hedrick  got  his  breath,  which  was 
churning  and  wheezing  in  his  throat,  he  cut 
Handy's  sentence  off  with: 

"  You  human  razor-back  shoat — you  swill- 
barrel  gladiator,  why — why — I — I "  And 

Hedrick  sparred  for  wind  and  went  on  before 
Handy  realised  the  situation.  "  Ab  Handy,  I 
spat  on  the  dust  and  breathed  into  the  chaff  that 
made  you,  and  put  you  on  the  mud-sills  of  hell 
to  dry,  and  I've  got  a  right  to  turn  you  back  into 
fertiliser,  and  I'm  going  to  do  it.  Git  out  of  here 
— git  out  of  this  office,  or  I " 

And  the  hulking  form  of  Hedrick  fell  on  the 
bag  of  shaking  bones  that  was  Handy  and  bat- 
tered him  through  the  latched  door  into  the 
crowded  outer  office;  and  Handy  picked  him- 


288  In  Our  Town 

self  up  and  ran  like  a  wolf,  turning  at  the  door 
to  show  his  teeth  before  he  scampered  through 
the  hall  and  scurried  down  the  stairs.  As  Hed- 
rick  came  puffing  out  of  the  broken  door  his 
coat  snagged  on  a  splinter.  He  grinned  as  he 
unfastened  himself: 

"Well,  the  snail  seems  to  be  on  the  thorn; 
the  lark  certainly  is  on  the  wing. 

"  God's  in  his  heaven. 

All's  right  with  the  world!  " 

And  he  batted  his  eyes  at  the  group  of  loafing 
local  statesmen  in  his  office  as  he  viewed  the 
wreckage,  and  went  to  the  telephone  and 
ordered  a  carpenter,  without  wasting  any  words 
on  the  crowd. 

We  decided  long  ago  that  the  source  of  Hed- 
rick's  power  in  politics  was  what  we  called 
his  "  do  it  now "  policy.  All  politicians  have 
schemes.  Hedrick  puts  his  through  before  he 
talks  about  them.  If  he  has  an  idea  that  satisfies 
his  judgment,  he  makes  it  a  reality  in  the  quick- 
est possible  time.  That  is  why  the  fellows 
around  town  who  hate  Hedrick  call  him  the 
rattlesnake,  and  those  who  admire  him  call  him 


In  Our  Town  289 

the  Wrath  of  God.  When  he  put  up  the  tele- 
phone receiver  he  reached  for  his  hat  and 
bolted  from  the  office  under  a  full  head  of 
steam.  He  went  directly  to  John  Markley's 
back  office,  got  the  check  that  Markley  had 
given  to  Handy,  dictated  a  letter  in  the  ante- 
room of  Markley's  office  to  a  Kansas  City 
plate-maker,  inclosed  fifty  dollars  as  he  passed 
the  draft  counter,  and,  as  he  swung  by  the  post- 
office  he  mailed  the  Handy  check  with  instruc- 
tions to  have  ten  photographic  half-tone  cuts 
made  of  the  check  and  mailed  back  to  Hedrick 
in  four  days. 

Then  he  went  to  Mrs.  Worthington,  told  her 
his  story,  as  a  lawyer  puts  his  case  before  a  jury 
— had  her  raging  at  Ab  Handy — and  got  an 
order  on  the  bank  for  the  check  she  had  given 
to  Handy.  This  also  he  sent  to  the  plate-maker, 
and  in  an  hour  was  back  at  his  desk  dictating 
a  half-page  advertisement  to  go  into  every  Re- 
publican weekly  newspaper  in  the  district.  He 
sent  that  advertisement  out  with  the  half-tone 
cuts  Monday  morning,  and  it  appeared  all  over 
the  district  that  week.  The  advertisement  was 
signed  by  Hedrick,  and  began : 


29°  In  Our  Town 

"  Browning  has  a  poem  made  after  visiting 
a  dead  house,  and  in  it  he  describes  the  corpse 
of  a  suicide,  and  says  '  one  clear,  nice,  cool 
squirt  of  water  o'er  the  bust,'  is  the  *  right  thing 
to  extinguish  lust.'  And  I  desire  this  advertise- 
ment to  be  '  one  clear,  nice,  cool  squirt  of 
water '  over  the  political  remains  of  Honour- 
able Abner  Handy,  to  extinguish  if  possible  his 
fatal  lust  for  crooked  money."  After  this  fol- 
lowed the  story  of  Handy's  perfidy  in  the  hitch- 
ing rack  case,  a  petition  in  disbarment  proceed- 
ings, and  the  copy  of  the  warrant  for  his  arrest 
charged  with  a  felony  in  the  case  sworn  to  by 
Hedrick  himself.  But  the  effective  thing  was 
the  pictures,  showing  both  sides  of  the  two 
checks,  each  carefully  inscribed  by  the  two 
makers  "  for  legal  services  in  the  hitching  rack 
case,"  and  each  check  indorsed  by  Handy  in  his 
big,  brazen  signature. 

Hedrick  saw  to  it  also  that,  on  the  day  the 
country  papers  printed  his  advertisement,  the 
Kansas  City  and  Topeka  papers  printed  the 
whole  story,  including  the  casting  out  of  Handy 
from  Hedrick's  office.  It  did  Handy  little 
good  to  go  to  Topeka  in  his  flashy  clothes  and 


In  Our  Town  291 

give  out  a  festive  interview  asking  his  friends 
to  suspend  judgment,  and  saying  that  he  would 
try  his  case  in  the  courts  and  not  in  the  news- 
papers. It  was  contended  hy  the  newspapers 
that  if  Handy  had  an  honest  defence,  it  would 
lose  no  weight  in  court  by  being  printed  in  the 
newspapers;  and  his  enemies  in  the  Congres- 
sional fight  pushed  the  charges  against  Handy 
so  relentlessly  that  the  public  faith  in  him 
melted  like  an  April  snow,  and  when  the  dele- 
gates to  the  Congressional  convention  were 
named,  our  own  county  instructed  its  delegates 
against  Handy.  The  farmers  opposed  him  for 
taking  the  case  against  them,  and  the  town 
scorned  him  for  his  perfidy.  No  one  who  was 
not  paid  for  it  would  peddle  his  tickets  at  the 
primaries,  so  Handy,  with  his  money  all  spent, 
went  home  on  the  night  of  the  local  primaries 
a  whipped  dog.  They  said  around  town  that  all 
the  whipped  dog  got  at  home  was  a  tin  can; 
for  it  is  certain  that  at  daylight  Handy  was 
down  on  Main  Street  viciously  drunk,  flourish- 
ing a  revolver  with  which  he  said  he  was 
going  to  kill  Charley  Hedrick  and  then  him- 
self. They  took  the  pistol  from  him,  and  then 


292  In  Our  Town 

he  wept  and  said  he  was  going  to  jump  in 
the  river,  but  no  one  followed  him  when  he 
started  toward  the  bridge,  and  he  fell  asleep  in 
the  shade  of  the  piers,  where  he  was  found  dur- 
ing the  morning,  washed  up  and  sent  home 
sober. 

One  of  the  curious  revelations  of  society's 
partnership  in  crime  was  the  way  the  grocers 
and  butchers  who  despised  Ab  Handy's 
method,  but  shared  his  gains  when  he  suc- 
ceeded, stopped  giving  him  credit  when  he 
failed.  At  the  end  of  the  first  year  after  the 
primary  wherein  he  was  defeated,  the  Handys 
could  not  get  a  dime's  worth  of  beefsteak  with- 
out the  dime.  And  dimes  were  scarce.  By  that 
time  Handy  was  wearing  his  flashy  New  York 
clothes  for  every  day — frayed  and  spotted  and 
rusty.  His  temperament  changed  with  his 
clothes,  from  the  oily  optimism  of  success  to 
the  sodden  pessimism  of  utter  failure;  which  in- 
spired Colonel  Morrison,  returning  after  the 
hitching  rack  case  had  been  settled  in  favour  of 
the  town,  to  remark,  speaking  of  Handy,  that 
"  an  optimist  is  a  man  who  isn't  caught,  and  is 
cheering  to  keep  up  his  courage,  and  a  pessimist 


In  Our  Town  293 

is  one  who  has  been  caught  and  thinks  it  will 
be  but  a  question  of  time  until  his  neighbours 
are  found  out  too." 

Mrs.  Worthington,  who  was  a  necessary  wit- 
ness in  the  disbarment  proceedings  and  the  crim- 
inal proceedings  against  Handy,  always  went  to 
Europe  when  the  cases  were  called;  so  rather 
than  put  a  woman  in  jail  for  contempt  of  court, 
the  court  dismissed  the  proceedings  against 
Handy  and  he  was  not  allowed  to  be  even  a 
martyr.  One  morning  about  a  year  and  a  half 
after  Handy's  defeat,  when  Hedrick  opened 
his  office  door,  he  found  Handy  there  with  his 
fingers  clutching  the  chair  arms  and  his  eyes 
fixed  on  the  floor.  The  man  was  breathing 
audibly,  and  seemed  to  be  struggling  with  a 
great  passion.  Hedrick  and  Handy  had  not 
spoken  since  they  came  through  the  panels  of 
the  door  together,  but  Hedrick  went  to  the  mis- 
erable creature,  touched  him  gently  on  the 
shoulder,  and  motioned  him  into  the  private 
office.  There,  with  his  eyes  still  on  the  floor, 
Handy  told  Hedrick  that  the  end  of  the  rope  had 
been  reached. 

"  I  had  to  come  down  without  any  breakfast 


294  In   Our  Town 

this  morning — because — they — they  ain't  any- 
thing in  the  house  for  her  to  fix.  And  there  ain't 
any  show  for  dinner.  Next  week,  Red  Martin 
has  promised  me  some  money  he's  goin'  to  get 
from  Jim  Huddleson;  but  they  ain't  a  soul  in 
town  but  you  I  can  come  to  now  ";  and  Handy 
raised  his  eyes  from  the  floor  in  canine  self-pity 
as  he  whined — "  and  she's  making  life  a  hell 
for  me!  "  When  Hedrick  opened  his  desk  and 
got  out  his  check-book,  he  smiled  as  he  fancied 
he  could  detect  about  Handy's  body  the  faint 
resemblance  of  a  wagging  tail.  He  made  the 
check  for  fifty  dollars  and  gave  it  to  Handy  say- 
ing, "  Oh,  well,  Ab — we'll  let  bygones  be  by- 
gones." 

Handy  snapped  at  it  and  in  an  instant  was 
gone. 

That  afternoon  Hedrick  met  Handy  sailing 
down  Main  Street  in  his  old  manner.  His  head 
was  erect,  his  eyes  were  sparkling,  his  big, 
rough,  statesman's  voice  was  bellowing  abroad, 
and  his  thumbs  were  in  the  armholes  of  his 
vest.  He  walked  straight  to  Hedrick  and  led 
him  by  the  coat  lapel  into  a  dark  stairway. 
There  was  an  air  of  deep  mystery  about  Handy 


In   Our  Town  295 

and  when  he  put  his  arm  on  Hedrick  to  whisper 
in  his  ear,  Hedrick,  smelling  the  statesman's 
breath  heavy  with  whiskey  and  onions  and 
cloves  and  cardamon  seeds  and  pungent  gum, 
heard  this: 

"  Say,  Charley,  I'm  fooling  'em — IVe  got  'em 
all  fooled.  They  think  I'm  poor.  They  think  I 
ain't  got  any  money.  But  old  Ab's  too  smart 
for  them.  I've  got  lots  of  money — all  I  want 
— all  anyone  could  want — wealth  beyond  the ' 
dreams  of  avar — of  av — avar — avar'ce,  as  John 
Ingalls  used  to  say.  Just  look  at  this !  "  And 
with  that  Handy  pulled  from  his  inside  coat 
pocket  a  roll  of  one  and  two-dollar  bills,  that 
seemed  to  Hedrick  to  represent  fifty  dollars  less 
the  price  of  about  ten  drinks.  "  Look  a-here," 
continued  Handy,  "  ol'  Ab's  got  'em  all  fooled. 
Don't  you  say  anything  about  it;  but  ol'  Ab's 
goin'  to  make  his  mark."  And  he  shook  Hed- 
rick's  hand  and  took  him  down  to  the  street,  and 
shook  it  again  and  again  before  prancing  grandly 
down  the  sidewalk. 

For  three  years  Mrs.  Handy's  boarding-house 
has  been  one  of  the  most  exclusive  in  our  town. 
They  say  that  she  pays  Mr.  Handy  for  mowing 


296  in  Our  Town 

the  lawn  and  helping  about  the  rough  work  in 
the  kitchen,  and  that  he  sleeps  in  the  barn  and 
pays  her  for  such  meals  as  he  eats.  Sometimes 
a  new  boarder  makes  the  mistake  of  paying  the 
board  money  to  Handy,  and  he  appears  on  Main 
Street  ostentatiously  jingling  his  silver  and 
toward  evening  has  ideas  about  the  railroad  sit- 
uation. On  election  days  and  when  there  is  a 
primary  Handy  drives  a  carriage  and  gathers 
up  his  cronies  in  the  fifth  ward,  who,  like  him, 
are  not  so  much  in  evidence  as  they  were  ten 
years  ago. 

It  was  only  last  week  that  Hedrick  was  in 
our  office  telling  us  of  Handy's  "  wealth  beyond 
the  dreams  of  avarice."  He  paused  when  he  had 
finished  the  story,  cocked  his  head  on  one 
side,  and  squinted  at  the  ceiling  as  he  said: 

"  For  three  long,  weary,  fruitless  years  I've 
searched  the  drug-stores  of  this  town  for  the 
brand  of  liquor  Ab  had  that  day.  I  believe  if 
I  had  two  drinks  of  that  I  could  write  better 
poetry  than  old  Browning  himself." 

Whereupon  Hedrick  shook  himself  out  of 
the  office  in  a  gentle  wheesy  laugh. 


XVII 
The  Tremolo  Stop 

OUR  business  has  changed  greatly  since 
Horace  Greeley's  day.  And,  although 
machines  have  come  into  little  offices 
like  ours,  the  greatest  changes  have  come  in 
the  men  who  do  the  work  in  these  offices. 
In  the  old  days — the  days  before  the  great  war 
and  after  it — printers  and  editors  were  rarely 
leading  citizens  in  the  community.  The  editor 
and  the  printer  were  just  coming  out  of  the  wan- 
dering minstrel  stage  of  social  development, 
and  the  journeyman  who  went  from  town  to 
town  seeking  work,  and  increasing  his  skill,  was 
an  important  factor  in  the  craft.  One  might 
always  depend  upon  a  tramp  printer's  coming 
in  when  there  was  a  rush  of  work  in  the  office, 
and  also  figure  on  one  of  the  tourists  in  the 
office  leaving  when  he  was  needed  most. 

From  the  ranks  of  this  wayward  class  came 
the  old  editors  and  reporters;  they  were  post- 
graduates from  the  back  room  of  newspaper 
297 


298  In  Our  Town 

offices  and  they  brought  to  the  front  room  their 
easy  view  of  life.  Some  of  these  itinerant  writ- 
ing craftsmen  had  professional  fame.  There 
was  Peter  B.  Lee,  who  had  tramped  the  coun- 
try over,  who  knew  Greeley  and  Dana  and 
Prentice  and  Bob  Burdett  and  Henry  Wat- 
terson,  and  to  whom  the  cub  in  country  offices 
looked  with  worshipful  eyes.  There  was  "  Old 
Slugs  " — the  printer  who  carried  his  moulds 
for  making  lead  slugs,  and  who,  under  the  in- 
fluence of  improper  stimulants,  could  recite 
stirring  scenes  from  the  tragedies  of  Shake- 
speare. There  was  Buzby — old  Buzby,  who 
went  about  from  office  to  office  leaving  his  obit- 
uary set  up  by  his  own  hand,  conveying  the  im- 
pression that  at  last  the  end  had  come  to  a  miss- 
pent life.  Then  there  was  J.  N.  Free — the 
"  Immortal  J.  N.,"  as  he  called  himself,  a 
gaunt,  cadaverous  figure  in  broad  hat  and  linen 
duster,  with  hair  flowing  over  his  shoulders, 
who  stalked  into  the  offices  at  unseemly  hours 
to  "  raise  the  veil "  of  ignorance  and  error,  and 
"  relieve  the  pressure  "  of  psychic  congestion  in 
a  town  by  turning  upon  it  the  batteries  of  his 
mind. 


In  Our  Town  299 

They  were  a  dear  lot  of  old  souls  out  of 
accord  with  the  world  about  them,  ever  seeking 
the  place  where  they  would  harmonise.  They 
might  have  stepped  out  of  Dickens's  books  or 
Cruikshank's  pictures,  and,  when  one  recalls 
them  now,  their  lineaments  seem  out  of  drawing 
and  impossible  in  the  modern  world.  And  yet 
they  did  live  and  move  in  the  world  that  was, 
and  the  other  day  when  we  were  looking  over 
the  files  we  came  across  the  work  of  Simon 
Mehronay, — the  name  which  he  said  was 
spelled  Dutch  and  sounded  Irish, — and  it  does 
not  seem  fair  to  set  down  the  stories  of  the 
others  who  have  made  our  office  traditions  with- 
out giving  some  account  of  him. 

For  to  us  he  was  the  most  precious  of  all  the 
old  tribe  of  journalistic  aborigines.  He  came 
to  the  office  one  bright  April  day  with  red  mud 
on  his  shoes  that  was  not  the  mud  of  our  river 
bottoms,  and  we  knew  that  he  had  ridden  to 
town  "  blind  baggage  "—as  they  say  of  men 
who  steal  their  way — from  the  South.  The  sea- 
son was  ripe  for  the  birds  to  come  North  and  it 
was  the  mud  of  Texas  that  clung  to  him.  His 
greeting  as  he  strode  through  the  front  room 


300  In   Our  Town 

not  waiting  for  a  reply  was  "How's  work?" 
And  when  the  foreman  told  him  to  hang  up  his 
coat,  he  found  a  stick,  got  a  "  chunk  of  copy," 
and  was  clicking  away  at  his  case  three  minutes 
from  the  time  he  darkened  the  threshold  of  the 
office. 

There  he  sat  for  two  weeks — the  first  man 
down  in  the  morning  and  the  last  to  quit  at 
night — before  anyone  knew  whence  he  came  or 
whither  he  was  bound.  He  had  a  little  "  false 
motion,"  the  foreman  said,  and  clattered  his 
types  too  audibly  in  the  steel  stick,  but  as  he  got 
up  a  good  string  of  type  at  the  end  of  the  day 
and  furnished  his  own  chewing  tobacco,  he  cre- 
ated no  unfavourable  comment  in  the  office.  He 
was  a  bald  little  man,  with  a  fringe  of  hair 
above  the  greasy  velvet  collar  of  his  coat,  with 
beady,  dancing  black  eyes,  and  black  chin 
whiskers  and  a  moustache  that  often  needed 
dyeing.  It  was  the  opinion  of  the  foreman  and 
the  printers  that  Mehronay's  weakness  was 
liquor,  though  that  opinion  did  not  arise  from 
anything  that  he  said.  For  during  the  first  two 
weeks  we  did  not  hear  him  say  much,  but  in  the 
years  that  followed,  his  mild  little  voice  that 


In  Our  Town  301 

ever  seemed  to  be  teetering  on  the  edge  of  the 
laugh  into  which  he  fell  a  score  of  times  during 
an  hour,  became  a  familiar  sound  about  the 
office,  and  the  soft,  flabby  little  hand  which  the 
other  printers  laughed  about,  during  the  first 
week  of  his  employment  with  us,  has  rested 
on  most  of  the  shoulders  in  the  shop  guiding  us 
through  many  sad  ways. 

In  those  days  there  were  only  three  of  us  in 
the  front  room.  All  the  bookkeeping  and  col- 
lecting and  reporting  and  editorial  writing  were 
done  by  the  three,  and  it  happened  that  one 
morning  near  the  first  of  the  month,  when  the 
books  needed  attention,  no  one  had  heard  the 
performance  of  "  Hamlet "  given  by  Thomas 
Keene  at  the  opera  house  the  night  before,  and 
no  one  about  the  paper  could  write  it  up. 
Wherefore  there  was  perturbation;  but  in  an 
hour  this  came  from  the  back  room  set  up  in 
type  and  proved  in  the  galley : 

4  There  were  more  clean  shaves  in  town  last 
night  than  have  been  seen  here  for  a  long  time. 
Everyone  who  wears  cuffs  and  a  necktie  got  a 
*  twice-over '  and  was  *  out  amongst  'em.'  In 
the  gallery  of  the  opera  house  roosted  the  col- 


302  In  Our  Town 

lege  faculty  and  the  Potter  boy  who  holds  the 
Cottonwood  Valley  belt  as  the  champion  lay- 
down  collar  swell,  and  near  him  was  Everett 
Fowler,  who  was  making  his  first  public  appear- 
ance in  his  new  parted  spring  whiskers,  and  was 
the  observed  of  all  observers.  Colonel  Alpha- 
betical Morrison,  with  his  famous  U-shaped 
hair-cut,  lent  the  grace  of  his  presence  to  the 
dress  circle.  The  first  Methodist  Church  was 
represented  by  Brother-in-law  John  Markley, 
who  is  wearing  a  new  flowered  necktie,  sent 
by  his  daughter  in  California  (if  you  must 
know),  and  General  Durham  of  the  Statesman 
says  that  when  the  orchestra  played  *  Turkey  in 
the  Straw,'  and  Bill  Master  began  to  shake  the 
sand-box — which  is  a  new  wrinkle  in  musical  cir- 
cles in  our  town — John  Markley's  feet  began  to 
wiggle  until  people  thought  this  was  his  *  chill 
day.'  After  *  Turkey  in  the  Straw,'  the  orchestra 
struck  up  something  quick  and  devilish,  which 
Charley  Hedrick,  who  played  the  snare  drum 
at  Gettysburg,  and  is  therefore  entitled  to  speak 
on  musical  subjects,  says  was  '  The  Irish  Wash- 
erwoman.' After  this  appropriate  overture  the 
curtain  rose  and  the  real  show  began. 


In  Our  Town  303 

"  Mr.  Keene's  Hamlet  is  not  so  familiar  to 
our  people  as  his  Richard  III.,  but  it  gave  great 
satisfaction;  for  it  is  certainly  a  Methodist 
Hamlet  from  the  clang  of  the  gong  to  the 
home-stretch.  The  town  never  has  stood  for 
Mr.  Lawrence  Barrett's  Unitarian  Hamlet, 
and  the  high  church  Episcopal  Hamlet  put  on 
the  boards  last  winter  by  Mr.  Frederick  Pauld- 
ing  was  distinctly  disappointing.  One  of  the 
most  searching  scenes  in  the  play  was  enacted 
when  Ophelia  got  the  power  and  had  to  be 
carried  out  to  the  pump.  The  Chicago  brother 
who  plays  the  ghost  has  a  great  voice  for  his 
work.  He  brought  many  souls  to  a  realizing 
sense  that  they  are  sin-stricken  and  hair-hung 
over  the  fiery  pit.  The  groans  and  amens  from 
the  sanctified  in  the  audience  were  a  delicate  com- 
pliment to  his  histrionic  ability.  The  queen 
seems  to  have  been  a  Presbyterian,  and  the  king 
a  Second  Day  Adventist  of  an  argumentative 
type.  And  they  were  not  popular  with  the  audi- 
ence, but  the  boy  preacher  who  did  Laertes 
was  exceedingly  blessed  with  the  gift  of 
tongues.  Brother  Pclonius  seems  to  have  been 
a  sort  of  presiding  elder,  and,  when  his  exhorta- 


304  In  Our  Town 

tion  rose,  the  chickens  in  Mike  Wessner's  coop, 
in  the  meat-market  downstairs,  gave  up  hope 
of  life  and  lay  down  to  be  cut  up  and  fried  for 
breakfast.  The  performance  was  a  great  treat 
and,  barring  the  fact  that  some  switchmen, 
thinking  Ophelia  was  full,  giggled  during  the 
mad  scene,  and  the  further  fact  that  someone 
yelled,  '  Go  for  his  wind,  Ham ! '  during  the 
fencing  scene,  the  evening  with  Shakespeare's 
weirdest  hero  was  a  distinct  credit  to  Mr. 
Keene,  his  company  and  our  people." 

We  wrote  a  conventional  report  of  the  per- 
formance, and  printed  Mehronay's  account  be- 
low it,  under  the  caption  FROM  ANOTHER 
REPORTER,  and  it  made  the  paper  talked  about 
for  a  week.  Now  in  our  town  Keene  was  a  his- 
trionic god  of  the  first  order,  and  so  many 
church  people  came  to  the  office  to  "  stop  the 
paper "  that  circulation  had  a  real  impetus. 
We  have  never  had  a  boom  in  subscription  that 
did  not  begin  with  a  lot  of  angry  citizens  com- 
ing in  to  stop  the  paper.  It  became  known  about 
town  who  wrote  the  Keene  article,  and  Mehro- 
nay  became  in  a  small  way  a  public  charac- 
ter. We  encouraged  him  to  write  more,  so 


In  Our  Town  305 

every  morning  the  first  proof  slips  that  came  in 
began  to  have  on  them  ten  or  a  dozen  short 
items  of  Mehronay's  writing.  There  was  a 
smile  in  every  one  of  them,  and  if  he  wrote 
more  than  ten  lines  there  was  a  laugh.  It  was 
Mehronay  who  referred  to  Huddleson's  livery- 
stable  joint — where  the  old  soaks  got  their 
beer  in  a  stall  and  salted  it  from  the  feed-box — 
as  "  a  gilded  palace  of  sin."  It  was  Mehronay 
who  wrote  the  advertisement  of  the  Chinese 
laundryman  and  signed  his  name  "  Fat  Sam 
Child  of  the  Sun,  Brother  of  the  Moon  and 
Second  Cousin  by  marriage  to  all  the  Stars." 
It  was  Mehronay  who  took  a  galley  of  pi  which 
the  office  devil  had  set  up  from  a  wrecked  form, 
and  interspersed  up  and  down  the  column  of 
meaningless  letters  "  Great  applause  " — "  Tre- 
mendous cheering  " — Cries  of  "  Good,  good ! 
— that's  the  way  to  hit  'em !  " — "  Hurrah  for 
Hancock  " — and  ran  it  in  the  paper  as  a  report 
of  Carl  Schurz's  speech  to  the  German- Ameri- 
can League  at  the  court-house.  It  was  Mehro- 
nay who  put  the  advertisement  in  the  paper  pro- 
claiming the  fact  that  General  Durham  of  the 
Statesman  office  desired  to  purchase  a  good 


3°6  In  Our  Town 

second-hand  fiddle,  and  explaining  that  the 
owner  must  play  five  tunes  on  it  in  front  of  the 
Statesman  office  door  before  bringing  it  in. 
Mehronay  originated  the  fiction  that  there  was 
an  association  in  town  formed  to  insure  its 
members  against  wedding  invitations  which,  in 
case  of  loss,  paid  the  afflicted  member  a  pickle 
dish  or  a  napkin  ring,  to  present  as  his  offering 
to  the  bride. 

Mehronay  started  a  mythical  Widowers' 
Protective  Foot-racing  Society,  and  the  town 
had  great  sport  with  the  old  boys  whose  names 
he  used  so  wittily  that  it  transcended  impudence. 
Mehronay  got  up  a  long  list  of  husbands  who 
wiped  dishes  when  the  family  was  "  out  of  a 
girl,"  as  our  people  say,  and  organised  them 
into  a  union  to  strike  for  their  altars  and  their 
kitchen  fires.  When  we  sent  him  out  to  write 
up  a  fire,  however,  he  generally  forgot  the 
amount  of  insurance  and  the  extent  of  the  loss, 
but  he  told  all  about  the  way  the  crowd  tried 
to  boss  the  fire  department;  and  if  we  sent  him 
out  to  gather  the  local  markets,  he  made  such  a 
mess  of  it  that  we  were  a  week  straightening 
matters  up.  Figures  didn't  mean  anything  to 


In  Our  Town  307 

Mehronay.  When  the  bank  failed,  he  tried  to 
write  something  about  it,  but  mixed  the  assets 
and  the  liabilities  so  hopelessly  that  we  had  to 
keep  him  busy  with  other  things,  so  that  he 
would  have  no  time  to  touch  the  bank  story. 
They  used  to  say  around  town  that  when  he  laid 
down  a  piece  of  money,  however  large,  on  a 
store  counter  he  never  waited  for  his  change, 
but  be  it  said  to  the  credit  of  most  of  the  mer- 
chants that  they  would  save  it  for  Mehronay 
and  give  it  to  him  on  his  next  visit  to  the  store, 
when  he  would  be  as  joyful  as  a  child. 

Gradually  he  left  the  back  room  and  became 
a  fixture  in  the  front  office.  He  wrote  locals 
and  editorials  and  helped  with  the  advertising, 
drawing  for  this  the  munificent  salary  of  fif- 
teen dollars  a  week,  which  should  have  kept 
him  like  a  prince;  but  it  did  not — though  what 
he  did  with  his  money  no  one  knew.  He 
bought  no  new  clothes,  and  never  buttoned 
those  he  had.  Before  sending  him  out  on  the 
street  in  the  morning,  someone  in  the  office  had 
to  button  him  up,  and  if  it  was  a  gala  day — say 
circus  day,  or  the  day  of  a  big  political  pow- 
wow— we  had  to  put  a  clean  paper  collar  on 


3°8  In  Our  Town 

Mehronay  above  his  brown  wool  shirt  and 
shove  out  the  dents  in  his  derby  hat — a  pro- 
cedure which  he  called  "  making  a  butterfly  of 
fashion  out  of  an  honest  workin*  man."  He 
slept  in  the  press-room,  on  a  bed  which  he  rolled 
up  and  stowed  behind  the  press  by  day,  and 
in  the  evening  he  consorted  with  the  goddess  of 
nicotine — as  he  called  his  plug  tobacco — and 
put  in  his  time  at  his  desk  with  a  lead  pencil 
and  a  pad  of  white  paper  writing  copy  for 
the  next  day's  issue.  Nothing  delighted  him  so 
much  as  a  fictitious  personage  or  situation  which 
held  real  relations  with  local  events  or  home 
people.  One  of  the  best  of  his  many  inventions 
was  a  new  reporter  who,  according  to  Mehro- 
nay's  legend,  had  just  quit  work  for  a  circus 
where  he  had  been  employed  writing  the  post- 
ers. Mehronay's  joy  was  to  write  up  a  local  oc- 
currence and  pretend  that  the  circus  poster- 
writer  had  written  it  and  that  we  had  been 
greatly  bothered  to  restrain  his  adjectives.  A 
few  days  after  the  Sinclair-Handy  wedding 
— a  particularly  gorgeous  affair  in  one  of  the 
stone  churches,  which  had  been  written  up  by 
the  bride's  mother,  as  the  whole  town  knew,  in 


In   Our  Town  309 

a  most  disgusting  manner — Mehronay  saf 
chuckling  in  his  corner,  writing  something 
which  he  put  on  the  copy-hook  before  going  out 
on  his  beat.  It  was  headed  A  DAZZLING 
AFFAIR  and  it  ran  thus : 

"  For  some  time  we  have  realised  that  we 
have  not  been  doing  full  justice  to  the  weddings 
that  occur  in  this  town;  we  have  been  using  a 
repressed  and  obsolete  style  which  is  painful  to 
those  who  enter  into  the  joyous  spirit  of  such 
occasions,  and  last  night's  wedding  in  the  fam- 
ily of  the  patrician  Skinners  we  assigned  to 
our  gentlemanly  and  urbane  Mr.  J.  Mortimer 
Montague,  late  of  the  publicity  department  of 
the  world-famed  Robinson  Circus  and  Menag- 
erie. The  following  graceful  account  from  Mr. 
Montague's  facile  pen  is  the  most  accurate  and 
satisfactory  report  of  a  nuptial  event  we  have 
ever  recorded  in  these  columns/* 

And  thereafter  followed  this: 

"  Last  evening,  just  as  the  clock  in  the  steeple 
struck  nine,  a  vast  concourse  of  the  beauty  and 
the  chivalry  of  our  splendid  city,  composing 
wealth  beyond  the  dreams  of  the  kings  of  India 
and  forming  a  galaxy  only  excelled  in  splendour 


310  In  Our  Town 

by  the  knightly  company  at  the  Field  of  the 
Cloth  of  Gold,  assembled  to  witness  the  mar- 
riage of  Miss  May  Skinner  and  Mr.  John 
Fortesque.  The  great  auditorium  was  a  bower 
of  smilax  and  chrysanthemums,  bewildering, 
amazing,  superb  in  its  verdant  labyrinth.  As 
the  clock  was  striking  the  hour,  the  ten-thou- 
sand-dollar pipe-organ  filled  the  edifice  with 
strains  of  most  seductive,  entrancing  music, 
played  by  Miss  Jane  Brown,  the  only  real  left- 
handed  organist  in  the  civilised  world.  Then 
came  the  wedding  party,  magnificent,  radiant, 
resplendent  with  the  glittering  jewels  of  the 
Orient,  dazzling  with  gorgeousness,  stupefying 
and  miraculous  in  its  revelation  of  beauty. 
There  were  six  handsome  ushers — count  them 
— six,  ten  bridesmaids — ten — a  bevy  of  real, 
live,  flower-bearing  fairies,  captured  at  an  im- 
mense outlay  of  time  and  money  in  far  Caucasia. 
The  bride's  resplendent  costume  and  surpassing 
beauty  put  the  blush  upon  the  Queen  of  Sheba, 
made  Hebe's  effulgence  fade  as  the  moon  be- 
fore the  sun;  and  as  the  long  courtly  train  of 
knights  errant  and  ladies-in-waiting  passed  the 
populace,  they  presented  a  regal  spectacle, 


In  Our  Town  311 

never  equalled  since  the  proud  Cleopatra  sailed 
down  the  perfumed  lotus-bearing  Nile  in  her 
gilded  pageant  to  meet  Marc  Antony,  while  all 
the  world  stood  agape  at  the  unheard-of  tri- 
umph. 

:<  To  describe  the  bride's  costume  beggars  the 
English  language;  and  human  imagination  falls 
faint  and  feeble  before  the  Herculean  task. 
From  the  everlasting  stars  she  stole  the  glitter- 
ing diamonds  that  decked  her  alabaster  brow 
and  hid  them  in  the  Stygian  umbrage  of  her  hair. 
From  the  fleecy,  graceful  cloud  she  snared  the 
marvellous  drapery  that  floated  like  a  dream 
about  her  queenly  figure,  and  from  the  Peri  at 
Heaven's  gate  she  captured  the  matchless  grace 
that  bore  her  like  an  enchanted  wraith  through 
the  hymeneal  scene. 

"  The  array  of  presents  spread  in  the  throne- 
room  of  the  Skinner  palace  has  been  unexcelled 
in  lavish  expenditure  of  fabulous  and  reckless 
prodigal  wealth  anywhere  in  the  world.  Golden 
tokens  literally  strewed  the  apartment,  merely 
as  effulgent  settings  for  the  mammoth,  ap- 
palling, maddening  array  of  jewels  and  precious 
stones,  sunbursts  and  pearls  without  price,  that 


312  In   Our  Town 

gleamed  like  a  transcendent  electrical  display 
in  the  hypnotising  picture." 

There  was  more  of  the  same  kind,  but  it  need 
not  be  set  down  here.  However,  it  should  be 
said  that  nothing  we  ever  printed  in  the  paper 
before  or  since  set  the  town  to  laughing  as  did 
that  piece.  We  have  calls  to-day  for  papers  con- 
taining the  circus-poster  wedding,  and  it  was 
printed  over  two  decades  ago. 

It  was  Mehronay's  first  great  triumph  in 
town;  then  the  expected  happened.  For  three 
days  he  did  not  appear  at  the  office  and  we  sus- 
pected the  truth — that  by  day  he  slept  the  sleep 
of  the  unjust  in  the  loft  of  Huddleson's  stable 
and  by  night  he  vibrated  between  the  Elite  oyster 
parlour,  where  he  absorbed  fabulous  quantities 
of  soup,  and  Red  Martin's  gambling-room, 
where  he  disported  himself  most  festively  be- 
fore the  gang  assembled  there.  The  morning 
of  the  fourth  day  Mehronay  appeared — but  not 
at  his  desk.  We  found  him  sitting  glumly  on 
his  stool  at  the  case  in  the  back  room,  clicking 
the  types,  with  his  hat  over  his  eyes  and  the 
smile  rubbed  off  his  face. 

We  were  a  month  coaxing  Mehronay  back 


In  Our  Town  313 

in  to  the  front  room.  His  self-respect  grew 
slowly,  but  finally  it  returned,  and  he  sat  at 
his  desk  turning  off  reams  of  copy  so  good 
that  the  people  read  the  paper  up  one  side 
and  down  the  other  hunting  for  his  items. 
He  is  the  only  man  we  have  ever  had  around 
the  paper  who  could  write.  Everyone  else  we 
have  employed  has  been  a  news-gatherer. 
But  Mehronay  cared  little  for  what  we  call 
news.  He  went  about  the  town  asking  for  news, 
and  getting  more  or  less  of  it,  but  the  way  he 
put  it  was  much  more  important  than  the  thing 
itself.  He  had  imagination.  He  created  his 
own  world  in  the  town,  and  put  it  in  the  paper 
so  vividly  that  before  we  realised  it  the  whole 
town  was  living  in  Mehronay's  world,  seeing 
the  people  and  events  about  them  through  his 
merry  countenance.  No  one  ever  referred  to 
him  as  Mr.  Mehronay,  and  before  he  had  been 
on  the  street  six  months  he  was  calling  people 
by  their  first  names,  or  by  nicknames,  which 
he  tagged  onto  them.  He  was  so  fatherly  to  the 
young  people  that  the  girls  in  the  Bee  Hive,  or 
the  White  Front,  or  the  Racket  Store  used  to 
brush  his  clothes  when  they  needed  it,  if  we  in 


3H  In  Our  Town 

the  office  neglected  him,  and  smooth  his  back 
hair  with  their  pocket  combs,  and  he — never  re- 
membering the  name  of  the  particular  minister- 
ing angel  who  fixed  him  up — called  one  and  all 
of  them  "  darter,"  smiled  a  grateful  smile  like 
an  old  dog  that  is  petted,  and  then  went  his  way. 
The  girls  in  the  White  Front  Drygoods  Store 
gave  him  a  cravat,  and  though  it  was  made  up, 
he  brought  it  every  morning  in  his  pocket  for 
them  to  pin  on.  He  was  as  simple  as  a  child, 
and,  like  a  child,  lived  in  a  world  of  unrealities. 
He  swore  like  a  mule  driver,  and  yet  he  told  the 
men  in  the  back  room  that  he  could  never  go 
to  sleep  without  getting  down  and  saying  his 
prayers,  and  the  only  men  with  whom  he  ever 
quarrelled  were  a  teacher  of  zoology  at  the  Col- 
lege, who  is  an  evolutionist,  and  Dan  Gregg, 
the  town  infidel. 

One  morning  when  we  were  sitting  in  the 
office  before  going  out  to  the  street  for  the 
morning's  grist,  Mehronay  dog-eared  a  fat 
piece  of  copy  and  jabbed  it  on  the  hook  as  he 
started  for  the  door. 

"  My  boy  was  drunk  last  night,"  he  said. 
"  Me  and  his  mother  felt  so  bad  over  it  that  I 


In  Our  Town  3 1 5 

gave  him  a  pretty  straight  talk  this  morning. 
There  it  is." 

The  office  dropped  its  jaw  and  bugged  its 
eyes, 

"  Oh,  yes,"  he  continued.  "  Didn't  you  know 
I  had  a  boy?  He's  been  the  best  kind  of  a  boy 
till  here  lately.  I  can  see  his  mother  don't  like 
it  and  his  sister's  worried  too."  His  face  for  a 
second  wore  an  expression  of  infinite  sadness, 
and  he  sighed  even  while  the  smile  came  back  on 
the  face  he  turned  to  us  from  the  door  as  he  said : 
"  Sometimes  I  think  he  is  studying  law  with  old 
Charley  Hedrick  and  sometimes  I  think  he  is 
in  the  bank  with  John  Markley;  but  he  is  al- 
ways with  me,  and  was  such  a  decent  boy  when 
I  had  him  out  to  the  College.  But  I  saw  him 
with  Joe  Nevison  last  night,  and  I  knew  he'd 
been  drinking." 

With  that  he  closed  the  door  behind  him 
and  was  gone.  This  was  the  article  that  Meh- 
ronay  left  on  the  hook: 

"  Your  pa  was  downtown  this  morning,  com- 
plaining about  his  *  old  trouble,'  that  crick  in  his 
back  that  he  got  loading  hay  one  hot  day  in 
Huron  County,  Ohio,  'before  the  army.'  The 


316  In  Our  Town 

(  old  trouble,'  as  you  will  remember,  bothers 
your  pa  a  good  deal,  and  your  ma  thinks  that 
his  father  must  have  been  a  pretty  hard-hearted 
man  to  let  him  work  so  hard  when  he  was  a 
boy.  Your  pa  likes  to  have  you  and  your  ma 
think  that  when  he  was  a  boy  he  did  nothing 
but  work  and  go  to  prayer-meeting  and  go 
around  doing  noble  deeds  out  of  the  third 
reader,  but  a  number  of  the  old  boys  of  the 
Eleventh  Kansas,  who  knew  your  pa  in  the 
sixties,  are  prepared  to  do  a  lot  of  forgetting 
for  him  whenever  he  asks  it.  The  truth  about 
your  pa's  '  old  trouble '  is  that  he  was  down  at 
Fort  Leavenworth  just  after  the  close  of  the 
war,  and  after  filling  up  on  laughing-water  at  a 
saloon,  he  got  into  a  fight  with  the  bartender, 
was  kicked  out  of  the  saloon,  and  slept  in  the 
alley  all  night.  That  was  his  last  whizz.  He 
took  an  invoice  of  his  stock  and  found  that  he 
had  some  of  the  most  valuable  experiences  that 
a  man  can  acquire,  and  he  straightened  up  and 
came  out  here  and  grew  up  with  the  country. 
Your  ma  met  him  at  a  basket-meeting,  and  she 
thought  he  was  an  extremely  pious  young  man, 
and  they  made  a  go  of  it. 


In  Our  Town  317 

"  So,  Bub,  when  you  think  that  by  breathing 
on  your  coat  sleeve  to  kill  the  whisky  you  can 
fool  your  pa,  you  are  wrong.  Your  pa  in  his 
day  ate  three  carloads  of  cardamon  seeds  and 
cloves  and  used  listerine  by  the  barrel.  He 
knew  which  was  the  creaky  step  on  the  stairs 
in  his  father's  house  and  used  to  avoid  it  com- 
ing in  at  night,  just  as  you  do  now,  and  he 
knows  just  what  you  are  doing.  More  than  that, 
your  pa  speaks  from  the  bitterest  kind  of  ex- 
perience when  he  pleads  with  you  to  quit.  It 
is  no  goody-goody  talk  of  a  mutton-headed 
old  deacon  that  he  is  giving  you;  it  has  taken 
him  a  year  to  get  his  courage  up  to  speak  to 
you,  and  every  word  that  he  speaks  is  boiled  out 
of  an  agony  of  bitter  memories.  He  knows  where 
boys  that  start  as  you  are  starting  end  if  they 
don't  turn  back.  Your  pa  turned,  but  he  recol- 
lects the  career  of  the  Blue  boys,  who  are  di- 
vided between  the  penitentiary,  the  poorhouse 
and  the  southwest  corner  of  hell;  he  recalls  the 
Winklers — one  dead,  one  a  porter  in  a  saloon 
in  Peoria,  one  crazy;  and  he  looks  at  you,  and 
it  seems  to  him  that  he  must  take  you  in  his 
arms  as  he  did  when  you  were  a  little  child  in 


3*8  In  Our  Town 

the  prairie  fire,  and  run  to  safety  with  you.  And 
when  he  talks  to  you  with  his  bashful,  halting 
speech,  you  just  sit  there  and  grin,  and  cut  his 
heart  to  its  core,  for  he  knows  you  do  not  under- 
stand. 

"  It's  rather  up  to  you,  Bub.  In  the  next  few 
months  you  will  have  to  decide  whether  or  not 
you  are  going  to  hell.  Of  course  the  '  vilest  sin- 
ner may  return  '  at  any  point  along  the  road — 
but  to  what?  To  shattered  health;  to  a  mother 
heart-broken  in  her  grave;  to  a  wife  damned 
to  all  eternity  by  your  thoughtless  brutality; 
and  to  children  who  are  always  afraid  to  look 
up  the  alley,  when  they  see  a  group  of  boys,  for 
fear  they  may  be  teasing  you — you,  drunk  and 
dirty,  lying  in  the  stable  filth !  To  that  you  will 
'  return,'  with  your  strength  spent,  and  your 
sportive  friends,  gone  to  the  devil  before  you, 
and  your  chance  in  life  frittered  away. 

"  Just  sit  down  and  figure  it  out,  Bub.  Of 
course  there  are  a  lot  of  good  fellows  on  the 
road  to  hell;  you  will  have  a  good  time  going; 
but  you'll  be  a  long  time  there.  You'll  dance 
and  play  cards  and  chase  out  nights,  and  soak 
your  soul  in  the  essence  of  don't-give-a-dam- 


In  Our  Town  319 

tiveness,  and  you'll  wonder,  as  you  go  up  in  the 
balloon,  what  fun  there  is  in  walking  through 
this  sober  old  earth.  Friends — what  are  they? 
The  love  of  humanity — what  is  it?  Thought- 
fulness  to  those  about  you?  Gentility — What 
are  these  things  ?  Letteroll — letteroll !  But  as 
you  drop  out  of  the  balloon,  the  earth  will  look 
like  a  serious  piece  of  landscape. 

"  When  you  are  old,  the  beer  you  have  swilled 
will  choke  your  throat;  the  women  you  have 
flirted  with  will  hang  round  your  feet  and  make 
you  stumble.  All  the  nights  you  have  wasted  at 
poker  will  dim  your  eyes.  The  garden  of 
the  days  that  are  gone,  wherein  you  should 
have  planted  kindness  and  consideration  and 
thoughtfulness  and  manly  courage  to  do  right, 
will  be  grown  up  to  weeds,  that  will  blossom 
in  your  patches  and  in  your  rags  and  in  your 
twisted,  gnarly  face  that  no  one  will  love. 

"  Go  it,  Bub!  don't  stop  for  your  pa's  sake; 
you  know  it  all.  Your  pa  is  merely  an  old 
fogy.  Tell  him  you  can  paddle  your  own  canoe. 
But  when  you  were  a  little  boy,  a  very  little  boy, 
'  with  a  soft,  round  body,  your  pa  used  to  take 
you  in  his  arms  and  rub  his  beard — his  rough, 


320  In  Our  Town 

stubby,  three-days'  beard — against  your  face 
and  pray  that  God  would  keep  you  from  the 
path  you  are  going  in. 

"  And  so  the  sins  of  the  father,  Bub — but 
we  won't  talk  of  that." 

Three  months  later,  when  the  Methodists 
opened  their  regular  winter  revival,  Mehronay, 
becoming  enraged  at  what  he  called  the  tin- 
horn clothes  of  the  travelling  evangelist  con- 
ducting the  meetings,  began  to  make  fun  of  him 
in  the  paper;  and,  as  a  revivalist  in  a  church  is 
a  sacred  person  while  the  meetings  are  going 
on,  we  had  to  kill  Mehronay's  items  about  the 
revival;  whereupon,  his  professional  pride 
being  hurt,  Mehronay  went  forth  into  the 
streets,  got  haughtily  drunk,  and  strutted  up 
and  down  Main  Street  scattering  sirs  and 
misters  and  madams  about  so  lavishly  that  men 
who  did  not  appreciate  his  condition  thought 
he  had  gone  mad.  That  night  he  went  to  the 
revival,  and  sat  upon  the  back  seat  alone,  mut- 
tering his  imprecations  at  the  preacher  until  the 
singing  began,  when  the  heat  of  the  room  and 
the  emotional  music  mellowed  his  pride,  and  he 
drowned  out  the  revivalist's  singing  partner 


In   Our  Town  321 

with  a  clear,  sweet  tenor  that  made  the  congre- 
gation turn  to  look  at  him.  Mehronay  knew 
the  gospel  hymns  by  heart,  as  he  seemed  to 
know  his  New  Testament,  and  the  cunning  re- 
vivalist kept  the  song  service  going  for  an  hour. 
When  Mehronay  was  thoroughly  sober  there 
was  a  short  prayer,  and  the  singer  on  the  plat- 
form feelingly  sang  "  There  Were  Ninety  and 
Nine  "  with  an  adagio  movement,  and  Meh- 
ronay's  face  was  wet  with  tears  and  he  rose  for 
prayers. 

He  came  to  the  office  chastened  and  subdued 
next  morning  and  wrote  an  account  of  the  re- 
vival so  eulogistic  that  we  had  to  tone  it  down, 
and  for  a  week  he  went  about  damning,  with  all 
the  oaths  in  the  pirate's  log,  Dan  Gregg  and 
the  College  professor  who  taught  evolution. 
But  no  one  could  coax  him  back  to  the  revival. 
As  spring  came  we  thought  that  he  had  for- 
gotten the  episode  of  his  regeneration,  and  per- 
haps he  had  forgotten  it,  but  the  Saturday  be- 
fore Easter  he  put  on  the  copy-hook  an  Easter 
sermon  that  made  us  in  the  office  think  that  he 
had  added  another  dream  to  his  world.  It  was 
a  curious  thing  for  Mehronay  to  write ;  indeed, 


322  In  Our  Town 

few  people  in  town  realised  that  he  did  write 
it;  for  he  had  been  rollicking  over  town  on  his 
beat  every  day  for  months  after  the  revival, 
and  half  the  pious  people  in  town  thought  he 
shammed  his  emotion  the  night  he  came  to 
the  church  merely  to  mock  them  and  their  re- 
vivalist. But  we  in  the  office  knew  that  Mehro- 
nay's  Easter  sermon  had  come  as  the  offering 
of  a  contrite  heart.  It  is  in  so  many  scrapbooks 
in  the  town  that  it  should  be  reprinted  here  that 
the  town  may  know  that  Mehronay  wrote  it. 
It  read : 

"  The  celebration  of  Easter  is  the  celebration 
of  the  renewal  of  life  after  the  death  that  pre- 
vails in  winter.  People  of  many  faiths  observe 
a  spring  festival  of  rejoicing,  and  of  prayer  for 
future  bounty.  Probably  the  Easter  celebration 
is  like  that  at  Christmas  and  Thanksgiving — a 
survival  of  some  ancient  pagan  rite  that  men  es- 
tablished out  of  overflowing  hearts,  rejoicing  at 
the  end  of  a  good  season  and  praying  for  favour 
at  the  beginning  of  a  new  one. 

s<  To  the  Christian  world  Easter  symbol- 
ises a  Divine  tragedy.  The  coming  of  Easter,  as 
it  is  set  forth  in  the  Great  Book,  is  a  most 


In  Our  Town  323 

powerful  story;  it  is  the  story  of  one  of  the 
deepest  passions  that  may  move  the  human 
heart — the  passion  of  father-love. 

"  Once  there  lived  in  the  desert  a  man  and 
his  little  child — a  very  little  boy,  who  some- 
times was  a  bad  little  boy,  and  who  did  not  do 
as  he  was  told.  On  a  day  when  the  father 
was  away  about  his  business  the  child,  playing, 
wandered  out  on  the  desert  and  was  lost.  From 
home  the  desert  beckoned  the  little  boy;  it 
seemed  fair  and  fine  to  adventure  in.  When  the 
boy  had  been  gone  for  many  hours  the  father 
returned  and  could  not  find  him,  and  knew  that 
the  child  was  lost  But  the  father  knew  the 
desert;  he  knew  how  it  lured  men  on;  he  knew 
its  parching  thirst ;  he  knew  its  thorns  and  bram- 
bles, and  its  choking  dust  and  the  heat  that 
beats  one  down. 

"  And  when  he  saw  that  the  boy  was  lost 
his  heart  was  aflame  with  anguish;  he  could  all 
but  feel  the  desert  fire  in  the  little  boy's  blood, 
the  cactus  barbs  in  the  bleeding  little  feet,  and 
the  great  lonesomeness  of  the  desert  in  the  little 
boy's  heart;  and  as  from  afar  the  man  htfard  a 
wailing  little  voice  in  his  ears  calling,  '  Father, 


324  In   Our  Town 

father!  '  like  a  lost  sheep.  But  it  was  only  a 
seeming,  and  the  house  where  the  little  boy  had 
played  was  silent. 

"  Then  the  father  went  to  the  desert,  and 
neither  the  desert  fire  murmuring  at  his  brow, 
nor  the  sand  that  filled  his  mouth,  nor  the  stones 
and  prickles  that  cut  his  feet,  nor  the  wild 
beasts  that  lurked  upon  the  hillsides,  could  keep 
out  of  his  ears  the  bleat  of  that  little  child's 
voice  crying  *  Father,  father !  '  When  the  night 
fell,  still  and  cold  and  numbing,  the  father 
pressed  on,  calling  to  the  child  in  his  agony; 
for  he  thought  it  was  such  a  little  boy,  such 
a  poor,  lonesome,  terror-stricken  little  boy  out 
in  the  desert,  lost  and  in  pain,  crying  for  help, 
with  no  one  to  hear. 

"  And  wandering  so,  the  father  died,  with 
his  heart  full  of  unspeakable  woe.  But  they 
found  the  wayward  child  in  the  light  of  another 
day.  And  he  never  knew  what  his  father  suf- 
fered, nor  why  his  father  died,  nor  did  he  un- 
derstand it  all  till  he  had  grown  to  a  man's 
stature,  and  then  he  knew;  and  he  tried  to  live 
his  days  as  his  father  had  lived,  and  to  lay 
down  his  life,  if  need  be,  for  his  friend. 


In  Our  Town  325 

"  This  is  the  Easter  story  that  should  come 
to  every  heart.  The  Christ  that  came  into  the 
desert  of  this  weary  life,  and  walked  here  foot- 
sore, heart-broken  and  athirst,  came  here  for 
the  love  that  was  in  His  heart.  Who  put  it 
there — whether  the  God  that  gave  Shakespeare 
his  brain  and  Wagner  his  harmonies,  gave 
Christ  His  heart — or  whether  it  was  the  God 
that  paints  the  lily  and  moves  the  mountains  in 
their  labours — it  matters  not.  It  is  one  God,  the 
Author  and  First  Cause  of  all  things.  It  is  His 
heart  that  moves  our  own  hearts  to  all  their  as- 
pirations, to  all  the  benevolence  that  the  wicked 
world  knows;  it  is  His  mind  that  is  made  mani- 
fest in  our  marvels  of  civilisation;  it  is  His  vast, 
unknowable  plan  that  is  moving  the  nations  of 
the  earth. 

"  Whether  it  be  spirit  or  law  or  tendency  or 
person — what  matter? — it  is  our  Father,  who 
went  to  the  desert  to  find  His  sheep." 

All  day  Saturday,  in  order  to  square  himself 
with  the  printers  who  set  up  his  sermon,  and  to 
rehabilitate  himself  in  the  graces  of  the  others 
about  the  office  who  knew  of  his  weakness. 
Mehronay  turned  in  the  gayest  lot  of  copy  that 


326  In  Our  Town 

he  had  ever  written.  There  was  an  "  assessment 
call  of  the  Widowers'  Protective  Association  to 
pay  the  sad  wedding  loss  of  Brother  P.  R.  Cul- 
lom,  of  the  Bee  Hive,"  whose  wedding  was  an- 
nounced in  the  society  column;  there  was  a  card 
of  thanks  from  Ben  Pore  to  those  who  had 
come  with  their  sympathy  and  glue  to  nurse  his 
wooden  Indian  which  had  blown  down  and 
broken  the  night  before,  and  resolutions  of  re- 
spect for  the  same  departed  brother,  in  most 
mocking  language,  from  the  Red  Men's  Lodge. 
There  was  an  item  saying  seven  different  varie- 
ties of  Joneses  and  three  kinds  of  Hugheses  were 
in  town  from  Lebo — the  Welsh  settlement; 
there  was  a  call  for  the  uniformed  rank  of  head 
waiters  to  meet  in  regalia  at  Mrs.  Larrabee's 
reception,  signed  by  the  three  men  in  town  who 
were  known  to  have  evening  clothes,  and  there 
was  a  meeting  of  the  anti-kin  society  announced 
to  discuss  the  length  of  time  Alphabetical  Mor- 
rison's new  son-in-law  should  be  allowed  to  visit 
the  Morrisons  before  the  neighbours  could  ask 
when  he  was  going  to  leave.  But  when  the  pa- 
per was  out  Mehronay  got  a  dozen  copies  from 
the  press  and  sent  them  away  in  wrappers  which 


In  Our  Town  327 

he    addressed,    and   the   piece   his   blue   pencil 
marked  was  none  of  these. 

For  many  days  after  Mehronay  wrote  his 
Easter  sermon  the  gentle,  low,  beelike  hum  that 
he  kept  up  while  he  was  at  work  followed  the 
tunes  of  gospel  hymns,  or  hymns  of  an  older 
fashion.  We  always  knew  when  to  expect  what 
he  called  a  "  piece  "  from  Mehronay — which 
meant  an  article  into  which  he  put  more  than 
ordinary  endeavour — for  his  bee-song  would 
grow  louder,  with  now  and  then  an  intelligible 
word  in  it,  and  if  it  was  to  be  an  exceptional 
piece  Mehronay  would  whistle.  When  he  began 
writing  the  music  would  die  down,  but  when 
he  was  well  under  sail  on  his  "  piece,"  the  steam 
of  his  swelling  emotions  would  set  his  chin  to 
going  like  the  lid  of  a  kettle,  and  he  would 
drone  and  jibber  the  words  as  he  wrote  them — 
half  audibly,  humming  and  sputtering  in  the 
pauses  while  he  thought.  Scores  of  times  we 
have  seen  the  dear  old  fellow  sitting  at  his 
desk  when  a  "  piece  "  was  in  the  pot,  and  have 
gathered  the  men  around  back  of  his  chair  to 
watch  him  simmer.  When  it  was  finished  he 
would  whirl  about  in  his  chair,  as  he  gathered 


328  In  Our  Town 

up  the  sheets  of  paper  and  shook  them  together, 
and  say :  "  I've  writ  a  piece  here — a  damn 
good  piece !  "  And  then,  as  he  put  the  copy  on 
the  hook  and  got  his  hat,  he  would  tell  us  in 
most  profane  language  what  it  was  all  about — 
quoting  the  best  sentences  and  chuckling  to  him- 
self as  he  went  out  onto  the  street. 

As  the  spring  filled  out  and  became  summer 
we  noticed  that  Mehronay  was  singing  fewer 
gospel  hymns  and  rather  more  sentimental 
songs  than  usual.  And  then  the  horrible  report 
came  to  the  office  that  Mehronay  had  been 
seen  by  one  of  the  printers  walking  by  night 
after  bed-time  under  the  State  Street  elms  with 
a  woman.  Also  his  items  began  to  indicate  a 
closer  knowledge  of  what  was  going  on  in  so- 
ciety than  Mehronay  naturally  could  have.  In 
the  fall  we  learned  through  the  giris  in  the  Bee 
Hive  that  he  had  bought  a  white  shirt  and  a 
pair  of  celluloid  cuffs.  This  rumour  set  the  office 
afire  with  curiosity,  but  no  one  dared  to  tease 
Mehronay.  For  no  one  knew  who  she  was. 

Not  until  late  in  the  fall,  when  Madame 
Janauschek  came  to  the  opera  house  to  play 
"  Macbeth,"  did  Mehronay  uncover  his  intrigue. 


In  Our  Town  329 

Then  for  the  first  time  in  his  three  years'  employ- 
ment on  the  paper  he  asked  for  two  show 
tickets!  The  entire  office  lined  up  at  the  opera 
house — most  of  us  paying  our  own  way,  not 
to  see  the  Macbeths,  but  to  see  Mehronay's 
Romeo  and  Juliet.  The  office  devil,  who  was 
late  mailing  the  papers  that  night,  says  that 
about  seven  o'clock  Mehronay  came  in  singing 
"  Jean,  Jean,  my  Bonnie  Jean,"  and  that  he 
went  to  his  trunk,  took  out  his  celluloid  cuffs,  a 
new  sky-blue  and  shell-pink  necktie  that  none  of 
us  had  seen  before,  a  clean  paper  collar — and 
the  boy,  who  probably  was  mistaken,  swears 
Mehronay  also  took  his  white  shirt — in  a  bun- 
dle which  he  proudly  tucked  under  his  arm  and 
toddled  out  of  the  office  whistling  a  wedding 
march.  An  hour  later,  dressed  in  this  regalia 
and  a  new  black  suit,  buttoned  primly  and  ex- 
actly in  a  fashion  unknown  to  Mehronay,  he 
appeared  at  the  opera  house  with  Miss  Colum- 
bia Merley,  spinster,  teacher  of  Greek  and  Hel- 
lenic philosophy  at  the  College.  The  office  force 
asked  in  a  gasp  of  wonder :  "  Who  dressed 
him?"  Miss  Merley — late  in  her  forties,  steel- 
eyed,  thin-chested,  flint-faced  and  with  hair 


33°  In  Our  Town 

knotted  so  tightly  back  from  her  high  stony 
brow  that  she  had  to  take  out  two  hairpins  to 
wink — Miss  Merley  might  have  done  it — but 
she  had  no  kith  or  kin  who  could  have  done  it 
for  her,  and  certainly  the  hand  that  smoothed 
the  coat  buttoned  the  vest,  and  the  hand  that 
buttoned  the  vest  put  on  the  collar  and  tie,  and 

as  for  the  shirt 

But  that  was  an  office  mystery.  We  never 
have  solved  it,  and  no  one  had  the  courage  to 
tease  Mehronay  about  it  the  next  morning. 
After  that  we  knew,  and  Mehronay  knew  that 
we  knew,  that  he  and  Miss  Merley  went  to 
church  every  Sunday  evening — the  Presby- 
terian church,  mind  you,  where  there  is  no 
foolishness — and  that  after  church  Mehronay 
always  spent  exactly  half  an  hour  in  the  parlour 
of  the  house  where  his  divinity  roomed.  A 
whole  year  went  by  wherein  Mehronay  was 
sober,  and  did  not  look  upon  the  wine  when  it 
was  red  or  brown  or  yellow  or  any  other  colour. 
Now  when  he  "  writ  a  piece  "  there  was  fre- 
quently something  in  it  defending  women's 
rights.  Also  he  severed  diplomatic  relations  with 
the  girl  clerks  in  the  White  Front  and  the  Bee 


In  Our  Town  331 

Hive  and  the  Racket,  and  bought  a  cane  and 
aspired  to  some  dignity  of  person.  But  Mehro- 
nay's  heart  was  unchanged.  The  snows  of  boreal 
affection  did  not  wither  or  fade  his  eternal 
spring.  The  sap  still  ran  sweet  in  his  veins 
and  the  bees  still  sang  among  the  blossoms 
that  sprang  up  along  his  path.  He  was  every- 
one's friend,  and  spoke  cheerily  to  the  dogs  and 
the  horses,  and  was  no  more  courteous  to  the 
preachers  and  the  bankers,  who  are  our  most 
worshipful  ones  in  town,  than  to  the  men  from 
Red  Martin's  gambling-room,  and  even  the 
woman  in  red,  whom  all  the  town  knows  but 
whom  no  one  ever  mentions,  got  a  kind  word 
from  Mehronay  as  they  met  upon  the  street. 
He  always  called  her  sister. 

And  so  another  year  went  by  and  Mehro- 
nay's  "  pieces  "  made  the  circulation  grow,  and 
we  were  prosperous.  It  became  known  about 
town  long  before  we  knew  it  in  the  office  that 
if  Mehronay  kept  sober  for  three  years  she 
would  have  him,  and  when  we  finally  heard  it 
he  was  on  the  last  half  of  the  third  year  and 
was  growing  sombre.  "  In  the  Cottage  by  the 
Sea  "  was  his  favourite  song,  and  "  Put  Away 


332  In  Our  Town 

the  Little  Playthings  "  also  was  much  in  his 
throat  when  he  wrote.  We  thought,  perhaps — 
and  now  we  know — that  he  was  thinking  of  a 
home  that  was  gone.  The  day  before  Mehro- 
nay's  wedding  a  child  died  over  near  the  rail- 
road, and  on  the  morning  he  was  to  be  married 
we  found  this  on  the  copy  hook  when  we  came 
down  to  open  the  office,  after  Mehronay  had 
gone  to  claim  his  bride : 

"  A  ten-line  item  appeared  in  last  night's  pa- 
per, away  down  in  one  corner,  that  brought 
more  hearts  together  in  a  common  bond — the 
bond  of  fear  and  sympathy  and  sorrow — than 
any  other  item  has  done  for  a  long  time.  The 
item  told  of  the  death,  by  scarlet  fever,  of  little 
Flossie  Yengst.  Probably  the  child  was  not 
known  outside  of  her  little  group  of  playmates ; 
her  father  and  mother  are  not  of  that  adver- 
tised clique  known  of  men  as  prominent  people; 
he  is  an  engineer  on  the  Santa  Fe,  and  the 
mother  moves  in  that  small  circle  of  friends 
and  neighbours  which  circumscribes  American 
motherhood  of  the  best  type.  And  yet  last 
night,  when  that  little  ten-line  item  was  read  by 
a  thousand  firesides  in  this  town,  thousands  and 


In  Our  Town  333 

thousands  of  hearts  turned  to  that  desolate 
home  by  the  track,  and  poured  upon  it  the  bene- 
diction of  their  sympathies.  That  home  was  the 
meeting-place  where  rich  and  poor,  great  and 
weak,  good  and  bad,  stood  equals.  For  there  is 
something  in  the  death  of  a  little  child,  some- 
thing in  its  infinite  pathos,  that  makes  all  hu- 
man creatures  mourn.  Because  in  every  heart 
that  is  not  a  dead  heart,  calloused  to  all  ;oy  or 
sorrow,  some  little  child  is  enshrined — either 
dead  or  living — and  so  child-love  is  the  one  uni- 
versal emotion  of  the  soul,  and  child-death  is 
the  saddest  thing  in  all  the  world. 

"  A  child's  soul  is  such  a  small  thing,  and  the 
world  and  the  systems  of  worlds,  and  the  infi- 
nite stretches  of  illimitable  space,  are  so  wide 
for  a  child's  soul  to  wander  in,  that,  sane  as  we 
may  be,  stolid  as  we  may  try  to  be,  we  think  in 
imagery,  and  the  figure  of  little  feet  setting  off 
on  the  far  track  to  the  end  of  things,  hunting 
God,  wrings  our  heart-strings  and  makes  our 
throats  grip  and  our  eyelids  quiver. 

"  And  then  a  child  dying,  leaving  this  good 
world  of  ours,  seems  to  have  had  so  small  a 
chance  for  itself.  There  is  something  in  all  of 


334  In  Our  Town 

us  struggling  against  oblivion,  striving  vainly 
to  make  some  real  impress  on  the  current  of 
time,  and  a  child,  dying,  can  only  clutch  the 
hands  about  it  and  go  down — forever.  It  seems 
so  merciless,  so  unfair.  Perhaps  that  is  why,  all 
over  the  world,  the  little  graves  are  cared  for 
best.  It  is  to  the  little  graves  that  we  turn  in  our 
keenest  anguish  and  not  to  the  larger  mounds; 
to  the  little  graves  that  our  hearts  are  drawn 
in  our  hours  of  triumph.  And  so  the  child, 
though  dead,  lives  its  appointed  time  and 
dies  only  in  the  fullness  of  its  years.  The  little 
shoes,  the  little  dresses,  the  *  little  tin  soldiers 
covered  with  rust,1  and  the  memories  sweeter 
than  dreams  of  a  honeymoon,  these  are  life's 
immortelles  that  never  fade.  And  though  men 
and  women  come  and  go  upon  the  earth,  though 
civilisations  may  wither  and  pass,  these  little 
images  remain ;  and  the  sun  and  the  stars*  which 
see  men  come  and  go,  may  see  these  little  idols 
before  which  every  creature  bows,  and  the  sun 
and  stars,  knowing  no  time,  may  think  these 
children's  relics  are  also  eternal. 

"  It  is  a  desperately  lonely  home,  that  Yengst 
home,  with  the  little  girl  gone  away  on  a  long 


In  Our  Town  335 

journey;  but  how  tight  and  close  other  fathers 
and  mothers  hugged  their  little  ones  last  night 
when  their  hearts  came  back  from  the  house  of 
sorrow.  And  the  little  ones,  feeling  no  fear,  un- 
conscious of  the  pang  of  terror  that  was  shoot- 
ing through  the  souls  about  them — the  children 
played  on,  and  maybe,  before  dropping  to  sleep, 
wondered  a  little  at  anxious  looks  they  saw  in 
grown-up  eyes. 

"  This  is  the  faith  of  a  little  child,  curious 
but  implicit,  in  the  goodness  of  those  things  out- 
side one's  self.  And  *  of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.' " 

A  day  or  so  after  the  wedding  someone  said 
to  him:  "  Mehronay,  sometimes  your  pieces 
make  me  cry,"  and  he  replied  with  all  the  fine 
sincerity  of  his  heart  showing  in  his  eyes :  "  Yes 
— and  if  you  only  knew  how  they  make  me  cry ! 
Sometimes  when  I  have  written  one  like — like 
that — I  go  to  my  bed  and  sob  like  a  child." 
He  turned  and  walked  away,  but  he  came  into 
the  office  whistling  "  The  Dutch  Company." 

After  his  wedding  we  made  brave,  in  a  sly 
way,  to  rail  at  Mehronay  about  his  love  affair, 
and  he  took  it  good-naturedly.  He  knew  the 


336  In  Our  Town 

situation  just  as  it  was;  his  sense  of  humour  al- 
lowed him  no  false  view  of  the  matter.  One 
afternoon  when  the  paper  was  out,  George  Kir- 
win,  the  foreman,  and  one  of  the  reporters 
and  Mehronay  were  in  the  back  room  leaning 
against  the  imposing-stones  looking  over  the 
paper,  when  Kirwin  said:  "Say,  Mehronay, 
how  did  you  get  yourself  screwed  up  to  ask 
her?" 

It  was  spoken  in  a  joke.  The  two  young  men 
were  grinning,  but  Mehronay  looked  at  the 
floor  in  a  study  as  he  said: 

"  Well,  to  be  honest — damfino  if  I  ever  did 
— just  exactly."  He  smiled  reflectively  in  a 
pause  and  continued:  "Nearest  I  remember 
was  one  night  we  was  sitting  with  our  feet  on 
the  base-burner  and  I  looked  up  and  says, 
4  Hell's  afire,  Commie  ' — I  called  her  that  for 
short — '  why  in  the  devil  don't  a  fine  woman 
like  you  get  married?  She  got  up  and  come 
over  to  where  I  was  a-sitting  and  before  I  could 
say  Lordamighty,  she  put  her  hand  on  my 
shoulder  and  says  real  soft  and  solemn :  *  I'll 
just  be  damned  if  I  don't  believe  I  will.' ' 

He  did  not  smile   when   he   looked   up,    but 


In  Our  Town  337 

sighed  contentedly  as  he  added  reverently: 
"And  so,  by  hell,  she  did!"  If  Columbia 
Merley  Mehronay  had  known  this  language 
which  her  husband's  innocent  inadvertence  put 
into  her  mouth  she  would  have  strangled  him-  — 
even  then. 

We  did  not  have  Mehronay  with  us  more 
than  a  year  after  his  wedding.  Mrs.  Mehronay 
knew  what  he  was  worth.  She  asked  for  twen- 
ty-five dollars  a  week  for  him,  and  when  we 
told  her  the  office  could  not  afford  it  she  took 
him  away.  They  went  to  New  York  City,  where 
she  peddled  his  pieces  about  town  until  she  got 
him  a  regular  place.  There  they  have  lived 
happily  ever  after.  Mehronay  brings  his  en- 
velope home  every  Saturday  night,  and  she 
gives  him  his  carfare  and  his  shaving-money 
and  puts  the  rest  where  it  will  do  the  most  good. 
When  the  men  from  our  office  go  to  New  York 
— which  they  sometimes  do — they  visit  with 
Mehronay  at  his  office,  and  sometimes — if  there 
is  time  for  due  and  proper  notice  of  the  func- 
tion in  writing — there  is  an  invitation  to  dinner. 
Mehronay  fondles  his  old  friends  as  a  child 
fondles  its  playmates  and  he  takes  eager  pleasure 


33 8  In  Our  Town 

in  them,  but  she  that  was  Columbia  Merley  all 
but  searches  their  pockets  for  the  tempter. 

Mehronay  has  never  broken  his  word.  He 
knows  if  he  does  break  it  she  will  tear  him  limb 
from  limb  and  eat  him  raw.  So  he  goes  to 
his  work,  writes  his  pieces,  hums  his  gentle  bee- 
song — so  that  men  do  not  like  to  room  with 
him  at  the  office — and  has  learned  to  keep  him- 
self fairly  well  buttoned  up  in  the  great  city. 
But  Miss  Larrabee  that  was — who  used  to  edit 
the  society  page  for  our  paper,  but  who  now 
lives  in  New  York — told  us  when  she  was  home 
that  as  she  was  walking  down  Fourth  Avenue 
one  winter  day  when  the  street  was  empty,  she 
saw  Mehronay  standing  before  the  window  of 
a  liquor  store  looking  intently  at  the  display  of 
bottled  goods  before  him.  When  he  saw  her 
half  a  block  away  he  turned  from  her  and 
shuffled  rapidly  down  the  street,  clicking  his 
cane  nervously. 

It  was  not  for  him  1 


XVIII 
Sown  in  Our  Weakness 

WHEN  one  comes  to  know  an  animal 
well — say  a  horse  or  a  cow  or  a 
dog — and  sees  how  sensibly  it  acts, 
following  the  rules  of  conduct  laid  down  by  the 
wisdom  of  its  kind,  one  cannot  help  wondering 
how  much  happier,  and  healthier,  and  better, 
human  beings  would  be  if  they  used  the  discre- 
tion of  the  animals.  For  ages  men  have  been 
taught  what  is  good  for  their  bodies  and 
their  minds  and  their  souls.  There  has  been 
no  question  about  the  wisdom  of  being  tem- 
perate and  industrious  and  honest  and  kind; 
and  the  folly  of  immoderation  and  laziness  and 
chicanery  and  meanness  is  so  well  known  that  a 
geometrical  proposition  has  not  been  more  defi- 
nitely proved.  Yet  only  a  few  people  in  any 
community  observe  the  rules  of  life,  and  of 
these  few  no  one  observes  them  all;  and  so 
misery  and  pain  and  poverty  and  anguish  are  as 

339 


34°  In  Our  Town 

a  pestilence  among  men,  and  they  wonder  why 
they  are  living  in  such  a  cruel  world.  It  was 
Eli  Martin  who,  back  in  the  seventies,  won  the 
prize  in  the  Bethel  neighbourhood  for  reciting 
more  chapters  of  the  Old  Testament  than  any 
other  child  in  Sunday-school;  and  the  old  Mc- 
Guffey's  Reader  that  he  used  on  week-days  was 
filled  with  moral  tales;  but  someway  when  it 
came  to  applying  the  rules  he  had  learned,  and 
the  moral  that  the  stories  pointed,  Eli  Martin 
lacked  the  sense  of  a  dog  or  a  horse.  Once, 
when  the  paper  contained  an  account  of  one  of 
Red  Martin's  police  court  escapades,  George 
Kirwin  recalled  that,  when  we  offered  a  prize 
during  the  Christmas  season  of  1880,  for  the 
best  essay  by  a  child  under  twelve,  it  was  Ethel- 
wylde  Swaney  who  won  the  prize  with  an  essay 
on  the  Weakness  of  Vanity;  and  she  married 
Eli  Martin  when  she  and  the  whole  town  knew 
what  he  was. 

Naturally  one  would  suppose  that  two  per- 
sons so  full  of  theoretical  wisdom  would  have 
applied  it,  and  that  in  applying  it  they  would 
have  been  the  happiest  and  most  useful  people 
in  all  the  town ;  but  instead  they  were  probably 


In  Our  Town  341 

the  most  miserable  people  in  town,  and  Mrs. 
Martin,  whom  we  knew  better  than  Red,  be- 
cause she  once  had  worked  in  the  office,  was  for- 
ever bemoaning  what  she  called  her  "  lot," 
though  we  knew  for  many  years  that  her  "  lot  " 
was  not  the  result  of  the  fates  against  her,  but 
merely  the  inevitable  consequence  of  her  tem- 
perament. 

Before  we  put  in  linotypes  and  set  our 
type  by  machinery  it  was  set  by  girls.  Usually 
we  employed  half-a-dozen,  who  came  from  the 
town  high  school.  They  kept  coming  and  going, 
as  girls  do  who  work  in  country  towns,  getting 
married  in  their  twenties  or  finding  something 
better  than  printing,  and  it  is  likely  that  in  ten 
years  as  many  as  fifty  girls  have  worked  in  the 
office,  and  be  it  said  to  the  credit  of  the  girls — 
which  cannot  be  said  of  so  many  of  the  boys 
and  men  who  have  worked  in  the  shop — that 
they  were  girls  we  were  proud  of — all  but 
Ethelwylde  Swaney. 

She  that  we  called  the  Princess  worked  in 
the  office  less  than  two  years,  but  the  memory 
of  her  still  lingers,  though  hardly  could  one  say 
like  "the  scent  of  the  roses  ";  for  the  Princess 


342  In  Our  Town 

was  not  merely  a  poor  compositor,  she  was  the 
kind  that  would  make  mistakes  and  blame 
others  for  them,  and  that  kind  never  learns. 
Though  she  ran  away  to  marry  Red  Martin — 
which  was  her  own  mistake — this  habit  of 
blaming  others  for  her  faults  was  so  strong 
that  she  never  forgave  her  mother  for 
making  the  match.  We  know  in  our  office  that 
Mrs.  Swaney  did  not  dream  that  the  girl  was 
even  going  with  Red  Martin  until  they  were 
married.  Yet  the  Martin  neighbours  for  twenty 
years  have  blamed  Mrs.  Swaney.  When  the 
Princess  was  in  the  office  we  found  out  that  the 
truth  wasn't  in  her;  also  we  discovered  that  she 
was  lazy  and  that  she  cried  too  easily.  Right  at 
the  busy  hour  in  the  afternoon  we  used  to  catch 
her  with  a  type  in  her  fingers  and  her  hand 
poised  in  the  air,  looking  off  into  space  for  a 
minute  at  a  time,  and  when  we  spoke  to  her  she 
would  put  her  head  on  her  case  and  cry  softly; 
and  the  foreman  would  have  to  apologise 
before  she  would  go  back  to  work.  Even  then 
she  would  have  to  take  the  broken  piece  of 
looking-glass  that  she  kept  in  her  capital  "  K  " 
box  and  make  an  elaborate  toilet  before  settling 


In  Our  Town  343 

down.  Moreover,  though  she  was  only  seven- 
teen, much  of  the  foreman's  time  was  spent 
chasing  dirty-faced  little  boys  away  from  her 
case,  and  if  some  boy  didn't  have  his  elbow  in 
her  quad  box,  she  was  off  her  stool  visiting 
either  with  some  other  girl,  or  standing  by  the 
stove  drying  her  hands — she  was  eternally  dry- 
ing her  hands — and  talking  to  one  of  the  men. 
In  all  the  year  and  a  half  that  she  was  in  the 
office  the  Princess  never  learned  how  to  help  her- 
self. When  she  had  to  dump  her  type,  she  had 
to  call  some  man  from  his  work  to  help  her — 
and  then  there  would  be  more  conversation. 

But  we  kept  her  and  were  patient  with  her  on 
account  of  her  father,  John  Swaney,  a  hard- 
working man  who  was  trying  to  make  some- 
thing of  the  Princess,  so  we  put  up  with  her 
perfumery  and  her  powder  rags  and  her  royal 
airs,  and  did  all  we  could  to  teach  her  the 
difference  between  a  comma  and  a  period — 
though  she  never  really  learned;  and  we  were 
still  patient  with  her,  even  when  she  deliber- 
ately pied  a  lot  of  type  after  being  corrected 
for  some  piece  of  carelessness  or  worse.  We 
made  due  allowances  for  the  Rutherford  temper, 


344  In  Our  Town 

which  her  father  warned  us  not  to  arouse. 
Nevertheless,  her  mother  came  to  the  office  one 
winter  day  in  her  black  straw  hat  with  a  veil 
around  it,  and  with  the  coat  she  had  worn  for  ten 
years,  to  tell  us  that  she  was  afraid  working  in 
the  shop  would  hurt  her  daughter's  social  stand- 
ing. So  the  Princess  walked  out  that  night  in  a 
gust  of  musk — in  her  picture  hat  and  sweeping 
cloak,  with  bangles  tinkling  and  petticoat  swish- 
ing— and  the  office  knew  her  no  more  forever. 

About  the  time  that  the  Princess  left  the 
office  to  improve  her  social  standing,  Eli  Martin 
and  his  big  mule  team  came  to  town  from  the 
Bethel  neighbourhood.  He  was  as  likely  a  look- 
ing red-headed  country  boy  as  you  ever  saw.  We 
were  laying  the  town  waterworks  pipes  that 
year,  and  Eli  and  his  team  had  work  all 
summer.  On  the  street  he  towered  above  the 
other  men  several  inches  in  height,  and  he  looked 
big  and  muscular  and  masculine  in  his  striped 
undershirt  and  blue  overalls,  as  he  worked  with 
his  team  in  the  hot  sun.  Of  course,  the  Princess 
would  not  have  seen  him  in  those  days.  Her 
nose  was  seeking  a  higher  social  level,  and  the 
clerks  in  the  White  Front  drygoods  store  formed 


In  Our  Town  345 

the  pinnacle  of  her  social  ideal.  But  Eli  Martin 
was  naturally  what  in  our  parlance  we  call 
a  ladies'  man,  and  he  was  not  long  in  learn- 
ing that  the  wide-brimmed  black  hat,  the  ready- 
made  faded  green  suit  and  the  red  string  neck- 
tie which  had  swept  the  girls  down  before  him 
in  the  Bethel  neighbourhood  would  accomplish 
little  in  town.  So  when  winter  came,  and  work 
with  his  team  was  hard  to  get,  he  sold  his  mules 
and  bedecked  himself  in  fine  linen.  He  had  a 
few  hundred  dollars  saved  up,  so  he  lived  in  the 
cabbage  smells  of  the  Astor  House,  and  fancied 
that  he  was  enjoying  the  refinements  of  a 
great  city.  Time  hung  heavily  upon  him,  and 
at  night  he  joined  the  switchmen  and  certain 
young  men  of  leisure  in  the  town  in  a  more  or 
less  friendly  game  of  poker  in  the  rooms  at  the 
head  of  the  dark  stairway  on  South  Main 
Street. 

When  spring  came  the  young  man  had  no 
desire  and  little  need  to  go  back  to  work,  for 
by  that  time  he  was  known  as  Lucky  Red.  In  a 
year  the  sunburn  left  him  and  he  grew  white 
and  thin.  He  went  to  Kansas  City  for  a  season, 
and  became  known  among  gamblers  as  far  west 


346  In  Our  Town 

as  Denver;  but  he  was  only  a  tin-horn  gambler 
in  the  big  cities,  while  in  our  town  he  was  at  the 
head  of  his  profession,  so  he  came  back  and 
opened  a  room  of  his  own.  He  came  back  in 
a  blaze  of  glory;  to  wit:  a  long  grey  frock  coat 
with  trousers  to  match,  pleated  white  shirts 
studded  with  blinding  diamonds,  a  small  white 
hat  dented  jauntily  on  three  sides,  a  matted 
lump  of  red  hair  on  the  back  of  his  head  and  a 
dashing  red  curl  combed  extravagantly  low  on 
his  forehead.  Before  he  left  town  for  his  for- 
eign tour  Red  Martin  used  to  hang  about  the 
churches  Sunday  evenings,  peering  through  the 
blinds  and  making  eyes  at  the  girls;  but  upon 
his  return  he  had  risen  to  another  social  level. 
He  had  acquired  a  cart  with  red  wheels  and  a 
three-minute  horse;  so  he  dropped  from  his 
social  list  the  girls  who  "  worked  out "  and 
made  eyes  at  those  young  women  who  lived  at 
home,  gadding  around  town  evenings,  picking 
up  boys  on  the  street  and  forever  talking  about 
their  "  latest." 

It  was  the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world 
that  Red  and  the  Princess  should  find  each 
other,  and  six  months  before  the  elopement  we 


In  Our  Town  347 

heard  that  the  Princess  was  riding  about  the 
country  with  him  in  the  red-wheeled  cart.  For 
after  she  left  the  office  in  one  way  and  another 
we  had  kept  track  of  the  girl — sometimes 
through  her  father,  who,  being  a  carpenter,  was 
frequently  called  to  the  office  to  fix  up  a  door  or  a 
window;  sometimes  through  the  other  girls  in 
the  office,  and  sometimes  through  Alphabeti- 
cal Morrison,  whose  big  family  of  girl  school- 
teachers made  him  a  storage  battery  of  social 
information. 

It  seems  that  the  Rutherford  temper  de- 
veloped in  the  Princess  as  she  grew  older.  Mrs. 
Swaney  was  Juanita  Sinclair;  her  father  was 
a  mild-mannered  little  man,  who  went  out  of 
doors  to  cough,  but  her  mother  was  a  Ruth- 
erford— a  big,  stiff-necked,  beer-bottle-shaped 
woman,  who  bossed  the  missionary  society  until 
she  divided  the  church.  John  Swaney,  who  is 
not  a  talkative  man,  once  got  in  a  crowd  at 
Smith's  cigar-store  where  they  were  telling 
ghost  stories,  and  his  contribution  to  the  horror 
of  the  occasion  was  a  relating  of  how,  when 
they  were  fooling  with  tables,  trying  to  make 
them  tip  at  his  house  one  night  at  a  family  re- 


34-8  In  Our  Town 

union,  the  spirit  of  Grandma  Rutherford  ap- 
peared, split  the  table  into  kindling,  dislocated 
three  shoulder-blades  and  sprained  five  wrists. 
It  was  this  Rutherford  temper  that  the  Princess 
wore  when  she  slouched  around  the  house  in 
her  mother-hubbard  with  her  hair  in  papers. 
The  girls  in  the  office  used  to  say  that  if  her 
mother  over-cooked  the  Princess's  egg  in  the 
morning  she  would  rise  grandly  from  the  break- 
fast table,  tipping  over  her  chair  behind  her, 
and  rush  to  her  room  "  to  have  a  good  cry,"  and 
the  whole  family  had  to  let  the  breakfast  cool 
while  they  coaxed  her  down.  That  was  the  Ruth- 
erford temper.  Also,  when  they  tried  to  teach 
her  to  cook,  it  was  the  Rutherford  temper  that 
broke  the  dishes.  Colonel  Morrison  once  told 
us  that  when  the  Princess  thought  it  was  time  to 
give  a  party,  the  neighbours  could  see  the  Ruth- 
erford temper  begin  wig-wagging  at  the  world 
through  the  Princess's  proud  head,  and  there 
was  nothing  for  her  father  to  do  but  to  kill  the 
chickens,  run  errands  all  day  to  the  grocery 
store,  and  sit  in  the  cellar  freezing  cream,  and 
then  go  to  the  barn  at  night  to  smoke.  It  was 
known  in  the  neighbourhood  that  the  Princesa 


The  traveling  men   on   the  veranda  craned   their   necks 
to  watch  her  out  of  sight 


In  Our  Town  349 

dragged  her  shoestrings  until  noon,  and  that  her 
bed  was  never  in  the  memory  of  woman  .made 
up  in  the  daytime.  We  are  Yankees  in  our 
town,  and  these  things  made  more  talk  to  the 
girl's  discredit  than  the  story  that  she  was  keep- 
ing company  with  Red  Martin! 

But  we  at  the  office  saw  in  the  proud  creature 
that  passed  our  window  so  grandly  nothing 
to  indicate  her  real  self.  The  year  that  Red 
Martin  came  back  to  town  the  Princess  used  to 
turn  into  Main  Street  in  an  afternoon,  wear- 
ing the  big  black  hat  that  cost  her  father  a 
week's  hard  work,  looking  as  sweet  as  a  jug  of 
sorghum  and  as  smiling  as  a  basket  of  chips. 
Though  women  sniffed  at  her,  the  men  on  the 
veranda  of  the  Hotel  Metropole  craned  their 
necks  to  watch  her  out  of  sight.  She  jingled  with 
chains  and  watches  and  lockets  and  chatelaines, 
carried  more  rings  than  a  cane  rack,  and 
walked  with  the  air  of  the  heroine  of  the  society 
drama  at  the  opera  house.  When  she  was  on 
parade  she  never  even  glanced  toward  our 
office,  where  she  had  jeopardised  her  social 
position.  She  barely  quivered  a  recognising  eye- 
brow at  the  girls  who  had  worked  with  her, 


35°  In  Our  Town 

and  they  had  their  laugh  at  her,  so  matters  were 
about  even.  But  the  office  girls  say  that,  after 
the  Princess  eloped  with  Red  Martin,  she  was 
glad  to  rush  up  and  shake  hands  with  them. 
For  we  know  in  our  town  that  the  princess 
business  does  not  last  more  than  ten  days  or 
two  weeks  after  marriage;  it  is  a  trade  of  quick 
sales,  short  seasons  and  small  profits.  The  day 
that  the  elopement  was  the  talk  of  the  town, 
Colonel  Alphabetical  Morrison  was  in  the  office. 
He  said  that  he  remembered  Juanita  Sin- 
clair when  she  was  a  princess  and  wore  Dolly 
Varden  clothes  and  was  the  playfullest  kitten  in 
the  basketful  that  used  to  turn  out  to  the 
platform  dances  on  Fourth  of  July,  and  ap- 
pear as  belles  of  the  suppers  given  for  the 
Silver  Cornet  Band  just  after  the  war.  "  But," 
added  the  Colonel,  "  this  town  is  full  of  saffron- 
coloured  old  girls  with  wiry  hair  and  sun- 
bleached  eyes,  who  at  one  time  or  another  were 
in  the  princess  business.  Not  only  has  every  dog 
his  day,  but  eventually  every  kitten  becomes  a 


cat." 


From  the  night  of  the  charivari  when  Red 
Martin  handed  the  boys  twenty  dollars — the 


In  Our  Town  351 

largest  sum  ever  contributed  to  a  similar  pur- 
pose in  the  town's  history — he  and  the  Princess 
began  to  slump.  The  sloughing  off  of  the  ve- 
neer of  civilisation  was  not  rapid,  but  it  was 
sure.  The  first  pair  of  shoes  that  Red  bought 
after  his  wedding  were  not  patent  leather,  and, 
though  the  porter  of  his  gambling  place  blacked 
them  every  morning,  still  they  were  common 
leather,  and  the  boy  noticed  it.  Likewise,  the 
Princess  had  her  hat  retrimmed  with  her  old 
plumes  the  fall  after  her  wedding,  bought  no 
new  clothes,  and  wore  her  giddy  spring  jacket, 
thin  as  it  was,  all  winter,  and  after  the  second 
baby  came  no  human  being  ever  saw  her  in  any- 
thing but  a  wrapper,  except  when  she  was  on 
Main  Street. 

The  neighbours  said  she  wore  a  wrapper  so 
that  she  could  have  free  use  of  her  lungs,  for 
when  Red  and  the  Princess  opened  a  family 
debate,  the  neighbours  had  to  shut  the  doors 
and  windows  and  call  in  the  children.  Notwith- 
standing all  the  names  that  she  called  him  in 
their  lung-testing  events,  there  was  no  question 
about  her  love  for  the  man.  For,  after  the  first 
year  of  her  marriage,  though  she  lost  interest  in 


352  In  Our  Town 

her  clothes  and  ceased  calling  for  the  "  fashion 
leaf  "  at  the  dress-goods  counter  in  the  White 
Front,  and  let  her  hair  go  stringy,  we  around 
our  office  knew  that  the  Princess  was  only  a  child, 
who  some  way  had  lost  interest  in  her  old  toys. 
When  God  gives  babies  to  children,  the  children 
forget  their  other  dolls,  and  the  Princess,  when 
the  babies  came,  put  away  her  other  dolls,  and 
played  with  the  toys  that  came  alive.  And  she 
spanked  them  and  fondled  them  and  scolded 
them  with  the  same  empty-headed  vanity  that 
she  used  to  devote  to  her  clothes. 

Red  Martin  was  one  of  the  Princess's  dearest 
dolls,  and  she  and  the  babies  were  his  toys; 
but,  being  a  boy,  he  did  not  care  for  them  so 
much  with  the  paint  rubbed  off,  yet  he  did  not 
neglect  them.  Instead,  he  neglected  himself. 
When  the  babies  began  to  put  grease  spots  on 
his  clothes,  he  did  not  clean  them,  and  about 
the  time  his  wife  quit  powdering,  when  she  came 
to  Main  Street,  he  stopped  wearing  collars. 
She  grew  fat  and  frowsy,  and  her  chief  interest 
in  life  seemed  to  be  to  over-dress  her  children, 
and  sometimes  Red  Martin  encouraged  her  by 
bringing  home  the  most  extravagant  suits  for 


In  Our  Town  353 

the  boys,  and  sometimes  he  abused  her  when 
the  bills  came  in  for  things  which  she  had  bought 
for  the  children,  and  asked  why  she  did  not  buy 
something  half-way  respectable-looking  to  wear 
herself.  After  each  of  their  furious  quarrels  she 
would  go  over  the  neighbourhood  the  next  day 
and  tell  the  neighbours  that  her  mother  had 
married  her  to  a  gambler,  and  ask  them  what  a 
gambler's  wife  could  expect.  If  any  neighbour 
woman  agreed  with  Mrs.  Martin  about  her 
husband  or  her  position  Mrs.  Martin  would  be- 
come angry  and  flounce  out  of  the  house,  but 
if  the  women  spoke  kindly  of  her  husband  she 
would  berate  him  and  weep,  and  assure  them 
that  she  had  refused  the  banker,  or  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  Bee  Hive,  or  anyone  else  who 
seemed  to  make  her  story  possible. 

By  the  time  that  the  third  baby  was  old  enough 
to  carry  his  baby  sister  and  the  fifth  baby  was  in 
the  crib,  Red  Martin's  face  had  begun  to  grow 
purple.  He  lost  the  gambling-room  which  was 
once  his  pride;  it  was  operated  by  a  youth  with 
a  curly  black  moustache,  whose  clothes  recalled 
the  days  of  Red's  triumph.  Red  was  only  a 
dealer,  and  his  trousers  were  frayed  at  the  bot- 


354  In  Our  Town 

torn  and  he  shaved  but  once  a  week.  Thea  the 
Princess  used  to  come  slinking  up  Main  Street 
at  night  carrying  a  pistol  under  her  coat  to 
use  if  she  found  the  woman  with  him.  Who  the 
woman  was  the  neighbours  never  knew,  but  the 
Princess  gave  them  to  understand  that  they 
would  be  surprised  if  she  told  them.  It  was 'her 
vanity  to  pretend  that  the  woman  was  a  society 
leader,  as  she  called  her,  but  the  boys  around 
the  poker-dive  knew  that  Red  Martin's  days  as 
a  heart-breaker  were  gone.  For  what  whisky 
and  cocaine  and  absinthe  could  do  for  Red  to 
hurry  his  end  they  were  doing,  but  a  man  is  a 
strong  beast,  and  it  takes  many  years  to  kill 
him.  Also,  the  Lord  saves  men  like  Red  for 
horrible  examples,  letting  them  live  long  that  He 
may  not  have  to  waste  others ;  but  women  seem 
to  have  God's  pity  and  He  takes  them  out  of 
their  misery  more  quickly  than  He  takes  men. 
With  the  coming  of  the  seventh  baby  the  Prin- 
cess died.  When  the  news  came  to  the  office  that 
she  was  gone  we  were  not  sorry,  for  life  had  held 
little  for  her.  Her  looks  were  gone;  her  health 
was  gone ;  her  dreams  were  smudged  out — pitiful 
and  wretched  and  sordid  as  they  were,  even  at 


In  Our  Town  355 

the  best.  Yet  for  all  that  George  Kirwin  took 
down  to  the  funeral  a  wreath  which  the  office 
force  bought  for  her. 

To  know  George  Kirwin  casually  one  would 
say  he  never  saw  anything  but  the  types  and 
machinery  in  the  back  room  of  our  office.  When 
he  went  among  strangers  he  seemed  to  be 
looking  always  at  his  hands  or  studying  his 
knees,  and  his  responses  to  those  whom  he  did 
not  know  were  "yea,  yea,"  and  "  nay,  nay"; 
but  that  night  he  told  us  more  about  the  funeral 
of  the  Princess  than  all  the  reporters  on  the 
paper  would  have  learned.  He  told  us  how  the 
pitiful  little  parlour  with  its  advertising  chro- 
mos  and  its  soap-prize  lamp  was  filled  with  the 
women  who  always  come  to  funerals  in  our 
town — funerals  being  their  only  diversion;  how 
they  sat  in  the  undertaker's  chairs  with  their 
handkerchiefs  carefully  folded  and  in  their 
hands  during  the  first  part  of  the  service,  wait- 
ing for  Brother  Hopper  to  tell  about  his 
mother's  death,  which  he  never  fails  to  do  at 
funerals,  though  the  elders  have  spoken  to  him 
about  it,  as  all  the  town  knows;  how  Red  Mar- 
tin, shaved  for  the  occasion,  and,  in  a  borrowed 


In  Our  Town 

suit  of  clothes,  stood  out  by  the  well  and  did  not 
come  into  the  house  during  the  services;  how 
only  the  elder  children  sat  in  the  front  room 
with  the  other  mourners,  and  how  the  prattle 
of  the  little  ones  in  the  kitchen  ran  through  the 
parson's  prayer  with  heart-breaking  insistence. 

George  seemed  to  think  that  the  poverty- 
stricken  little  makeshifts  to  bring  beauty  into 
the  miserable  home  and  keep  up  the  appear- 
ance of  a  kind  of  gentility — perhaps  for  the 
children — was  the  best  thing  he  ever  knew 
about  the  Princess,  and  he  said  that  he  was  glad 
that  he  went  to  the  funeral  for  the  geraniums  in 
the  crepe  paper  covered  tomato  cans,  the  cheap 
lace  curtains  at  the  windows,  and  the  hair« 
wreath  inheritance  from  the  Swaneys,  made  him 
think  that  the  best  of  the  Princess  might  have 
survived  all  the  rack  and  calamity  of  the  years. 

When  the  funeral  left  the  house  the  neighbour 
women  came  and  put  it  in  order,  and  there  was 
a  better  supper  waiting  for  the  father  and  the 
children  than  they  had  eaten  for  many  years. 
And  then,  after  the  dishes  were  put  away,  the 
neighbours  left ;  and  for  what  he  tried  to  do  and 
be  for  the  motherless  brood  just  that  one  night, 


In  Our  Town  357 

God  will  put  down  a  good  mark  for  Eli  Martin 
— even  though  the  man  failed  most  sadly. 

When  he  went  back  to  the  gambling-room 
the  next  night,  where  he  was  porter;  men  tried 
not  to  swear  while  he  was  in  earshot,  and  the 
next  day  they  swore  only  mild  oaths  around 
him,  out  of  respect  for  his  grief,  but  the  day 
after  they  forgot  their  compunctions,  and, 
within  a  week,  Red  Martin  seemed  to  have 
forgotten,  too.  In  time,  the  family  was  scat- 
tered over  the  earth — divided  among  kin,  and 
adopted  out,  and  as  the  town  grew  older  its 
conscience  quickened  and  the  gambling-room 
was  closed,  whereupon  Red  Martin  went  to 
Huddleston's  livery  stable,  where  he  worked  for 
enough  to  keep  him  in  whisky  and  laudanum, 
and  ate  only  when  someone  gave  him  food. 

He  grew  dirty,  unkempt,  and  dull-witted. 
Disease  bent  and  twisted  him  hideously.  When 
he  was  too  sick  to  work,  he  went  to  the  poor- 
house,  and  came  back  weak  and  pale  to  sit 
much  in  the  sun  on  the  south  side  of  the  build- 
ing like  a  sick  dog.  When  he  is  lying  about  the 
street  drunk,  little  boys  poke  sticks  at  him  and 
flee  with  terror  before  him  when  he  wakes  to 


358  In  Our  Town 

blind  rage  and  stumbles  after  them.  It  is  hard 
to  realise  that  this  disgusting,  inhuman-looking 
creature  is  the  Red  Martin  of  twenty  years  ago, 
who,  in  his  long  grey  frock  coat,  patent  leather 
shoes,  white  hat  and  black  tie,  walked  serenely 
up  the  steps  of  the  bank  the  day  it  failed,  tapped 
on  the  door-pane  with  his  revolver  barrel,  and, 
when  a  man  came  to  answer,  made  him  open, 
and  backed  out  with  his  revolver  in  one  hand 
and  his  diamonds  and  money  in  the  other.  He 
does  not  recall  in  any  vague  way  the  Red  Mar- 
tin who  gave  the  town  a  month's  smile  when 
he  said,  after  losing  all  his  money  on  election, 
that  he  had  learned  never  to  bet  on  anything 
that  could  talk,  or  had  less  than  four  legs. 
That  Red  Martin  has  been  dead  these  many 
years ;  perhaps  he  was  no  more  worthy  than  this 
one  who  hangs  on  to  life,  and  bears  the  name 
and  the  disgrace  that  his  dead  youth  made  in- 
evitable. 

How  strange  it  is  that  a  man  should  wreck 
himself,  and  blight  those  of  his  own  blood  as 
this  man  has  done !  He  knew  what  we  all  know 
about  life  and  its  rules.  He  had  been  told,  as 
we  all  are  told  in  a  thousand  ways,  that  bad 


In  Our  Town  359 

conduct  brings  sorrow  to  the  world,  and  that 
pain  and  wretchedness  are  the  only  rewards 
of  that  behaviour  which  men  call  sin.  And 
yet  there  he  is,  sitting  on  his  hunkers  near  the 
stable,  with  God's  stamp  of  failure  all  over  his 
broken,  battered  body — put  there  by  Red  Mar- 
tin's own  hands.  But  George  Kirwin,  who  often 
thinks  with  a  kindlier  spirit  than  others,  says  we 
are  Red  Martin's  partners  in  iniquity,  for  we 
all  lived  here  with  him,  maintaining  a  town  that 
tolerated  gambling  and  debauchery,  and  that, 
in  some  way,  we  shall  each  of  us  suffer  as  Red 
has  suffered,  insomuch  as  each  has  had  his  share 
in  a  neighbour's  shame. 

We  tell  George  that  he  is  getting  old,  though 
he  is  still  on  the  bright  side  of  forty,  because  he 
likes  to  come  down  town  of  evenings  and  hold  a 
parliament  with  Henry  Larmy  and  Dan  Gregg 
and  Colonel  Morrison.  Sometimes  they  hold  it 
in  the  office  and  settle  important  affairs.  A 
month  ago  they  settled  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  and  the  other  night,  returning  to  their 
former  subject,  the  question  came  up :  "  What 
will  become  of  Red  Martin  when  he  goes  to 
Heaven?  "  Dan  contended  that  the  poor  fellow 


3 6o  In  Our  Town 

is  carrying  around  his  own  little  blowpipe  hell 
as  he  goes  through  life.  George  Kirwin  main- 
tained that  Red  Martin  will  enter  the  next 
world  with  the  soul  that  died  when  his  body 
began  to  live  in  wickedness;  that  there  must 
have  been  some  imperishable  good  in  him  as  a 
boy,  and  that  Heaven,  or  whatever  we  decide  to 
call  the  next  world,  must  be  full  of  men  and 
women  like  Red  Martin — some  more  respect- 
able than  he — whose  hell  will  be  the  unmasking 
of  their  real  selves  in  the  world  where  we 
"  shall  know  as  we  are  known."  While  we  were 
sitting  in  judgment  on  poor  Red  Martin,  in 
toddled  Simon  Mehronay,  who  is  visiting  in 
town  from  New  York  in  the  company  of 
the  vestal  virgin  who  had,  as  he  expressed  it, 
snatched  him  as  a  brand  from  the  burning. 
Mehronay  has  been  gone  from  town  nearly 
twenty  years,  and  until  they  told  him  he  did 
not  know  how  Red  Martin  had  fallen.  When 
he  heard  it,  Mehronay  sighed  and  tears  came 
into  his  dear  old  eyes,  as  he  put  his  hand  on 
Colonel  Morrison's  arm  and  said: 

"Poor  Red!  Poor   Red!  A   decent,  brave, 
big-hearted    chap!    Why,    he's    taken    whisky 


In  Our  Town  361 

away  from  me  a  dozen  times!  He's  won  my 
money  from  me  to  keep  it  over  Saturday  night. 
Why,  I'm  no  better  than  he  is!  Only  they've 
caught  Red,  and  they  haven't  caught  me.  And 
when  we  stand  before  the  judgment-seat,  I  can 
tell  a  damnsight  more  good  things  about  Red 
than  he  can  about  me.  I'm  going  out  to  find 
him  and  get  him  a  square  meal." 

And  so,  while  we  were  debating,  Mehronay 
went  down  the  Jericho  road  looking  for  the 
man  who  was  lying  there,  beaten  and  bruised 
and  waiting  for  the  Samaritan. 


XIX 

"  Thirty  " 

IN  the  afternoon,  between  two  and  three 
o'clock,  the  messenger  boy  from  the  tele- 
graph office  brings  over  the  final  sheet  of 
the  day's  report  of  the  Associated  Press.  Al- 
ways at  the  end  is  the  signature  "  Thirty." 
That  tells  us  that  the  report  is  closed  for  the 
day.  Just  why  "  Thirty "  should  be  used  to 
indicate  the  close  of  the  day's  work  no  one 
seems  to  know.  It  is  the  custom.  They  do  so  in 
telegraph  offices  all  over  the  country,  and  in  the 
newspaper  business  "  Thirty  "  stands  so  signifi- 
cantly for  the  end  that  whenever  a  printer  or  a 
reporter  dies  his  associates  generally  feel  called 
upon  to  have  a  floral  emblem  made  with  that 
figure  in  the  centre.  It  is  therefore  entirely 
proper  that  these  sketches  of  life  in  a  country 
town,  seen  through  a  reporter's  eyes,  should 
close  with  that  symbolic  word.  But  how  to 
close?  That  is  the  question. 
362 


In  Our  Town  363 

Sitting  here  by  the  office  window,  with  the 
smell  of. ink  in  one's  nostrils,  with  the  steady 
monotonous  clatter  of  the  linotypes  in  the  ears, 
and  the  whirring  of  the  shafting  from  the  press- 
room in  the  basement  throbbing  through  one's 
nerves,  with  the  very  material  realisation  of  the 
office  around  one ;  we  feel  that  only  a  small  part 
of  it,  and  of  the  life  about  it,  has  been  set  down 
in  these  sketches.  Passing  the  office  window 
every  moment  is  someone  with  a  story  that 
should  be  told.  Every  human  life,  if  one 
could  know  it  well  and  translate  it  into 
language,  has  in  it  the  making  of  a  great  story. 
It  is  because  we  are  blind  that  we  pass  men  and 
women  around  us,  heedless  of  the  tragic  quality 
of  their  lives.  If  each  man  or  woman  could 
understand  that  every  other  human  life  is  as 
full  of  sorrows,  of  joys,  of  base  temptations,  of 
heartaches  and  of  remorse  as  his  own,  which  he 
thinks  so  peculiarly  isolated  from  the  web  of 
life,  how  much  kinder,  how  much  gentler  he 
would  be !  And  how  much  richer  life  would  be 
for  all  of  us!  Life  is  dull  to  no  one;  but  life 
seems  dull  to  those  dull  persons  who  think  life 
is  dull  for  others,  and  who  see  only  the  drab 


3^4  In  Our  Town 

and  grey  shades  in  the  woof  that  is  woven 
about  them. 

Here  in  our  town  are  ten  thousand  people, 
and  yet  these  sketches  have  told  of  less  than 
two  score  of  them.  In  the  town  are  thou- 
sands of  others  quite  as  interesting  as  these  of 
whom  we  have  written.  A  few  minutes  ago  Jim 
Bolton  rode  by  on  his  hack.  There  is  no  reason 
why  others  should  be  advertised  of  men  and 
Jim  left  out;  for  Jim  is  the  proudest  man  in 
town. 

He  came  here  when  the  town  was  young,  and 
was  president  of  the  Anti-Horse-Thief  League 
in  the  days  before  it  became  an  emeritus  institu- 
tion, when  it  was  a  power  in  politics  and  named 
the  Sheriff  as  a  matter  of  right  and  of  course. 
Jim  has  never  let  the  fact  that  he  kept  a  livery- 
stable  and  drove  a  hack  interfere  with  his  posi- 
tion as  leading  citizen.  He  keeps  a  livery- 
stable,  because  that  is  his  business,  and  he  drives 
a  hack  because  he  cannot  trust  such  a  valuable 
piece  of  property  in  the  hands  of  the  boy.  But 
when  the  street  fair  is  to  be  put  on,  or  the  base- 
ball team  financed,  or  when  the  Baptist  Church 
needs  a  new  roof,  or  the  petitions  are  to  be  cir- 


In  Our  Town  365 

culated  for  a  bond  election,  Jim  Bolton  gets 
down  from  his  hack,  puts  on  his  crystal  slipper 
and  is  the  Cinderella  of  the  occasion.  That  is 
why,  when  young  men  go  in  Jim's  hack  to  take 
young^  women  to  parties  and  dances,  they  al- 
ways invite  Jim  in  to  sit  by  the  fire  and  get 
warm  while  the  girls  are  primping.  That  is 
why,  when  young  Ben  Mercer,  just  home  from 
five  years  at  Harvard,  offered  Jim  a  "  tip  " 
over  the  usual  twenty-five-cent  fare,  Jim  quietly 
took  off  his  coat  and  whipped  young  Ben  where 
he  stood — and  the  town  lined  up  for  an  hour, 
each  man  eager  for  the  privilege  of  contributing 
ten  cents  to  the  popular  subscription  to  pay  old 
Jim's  fine  and  costs  in  police-court. 

Following  Jim  Bolton  on  his  hack  past 
the  office  window  came  Bill  Harrison,  once 
extra  brakeman  on  the  Dry  Creek  Branch,  just 
promoted  to  be  conductor  on  the  main  line,  and 
¥)  full  of  vainglory  in  his  exalted  position  that 
he  wears  his  brass  buttons  on  freight  trains. 
Bill's  wife  signs  his  pay-check  and  doles  out  his 
cigar  money,  a  quarter  at  a  time,  and  when  he 
asks  for  a  dollar,  she  looks  at  him  as  if  she  sus- 
pected him  of  leading  a  double  life.  It  is  her 


366  In  Our  Town 

ambition  to  live  in  Topeka,  for  "  there  are  so 
many  conductors  in  Topeka,"  she  says,  "  that 
society  is  not  so  mixed  " — as  it  is  in  our  town, 
where  she  complains  that  the  switchmen  and  the 
firemen  and  the  student-brakemen  dominate  so- 
ciety. Once  a  cigar  salesman  from  Kansas  City 
got  on  Bill's  train  and  offered  a  lead  dollar  for 
fare. 

"  I  can't  take  this,"  protested  Bill,  emphasis- 
ing the  "  I,"  because  his  job  was  new. 

:<  Well,  then,  you  might  just  turn  that  one 
over  to  the  company,"  responded  the  drummer. 

And  when  the  head-brakeman  told  it  in  the 
yards,  Bill  had  to  fuss  with  his  wife  for  two 
days  to  get  money  for  a  box  of  cigars  to  stop 
the  trouble. 

As  these  lines  were  being  written,  Miss  Lit- 
tleton came  into  the  office  with  a  notice  for  the 
Missionary  Society.  She  has  been  teaching 
school  in  town  for  thirty  years  and  is  not  so 
cheerful  as  she  was  once.  For  a  long  time  the 
board  has  considered  dismissing  her;  but  it 
continues  to  change  her  around  from  building 
to  building  and  from  room  to  room,  and  to  keep 
her  out  of  sheer  pity;  and  she  knows  it.  There 


Counting  the  liars  and  scoundrels  and  double-dealers  and 
villains  who  pass 


In  Our  Town  367 

is  tragedy  enough  in  her  story  to  fill  a  book. 
Yet  she  looks  as  humdrum  as  you  please,  and 
smiles  so  gaily  as  she  puts  down  her  notice,  that 
one  thinks  perhaps  she  is  trying  to  dispel  the 
impression  that  she  is  cross  and  impatient  with 
children. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  street,  upstairs  in 
his  dusty  real  estate  office,  with  tin  placards  of 
insurance  companies  on  the  wall,  and  gaudy 
calendars  tacked  everywhere,  Silas  Buckner 
stands  at  the  window  counting  the  liars  and 
scoundrels,  and  double-dealers  and  villains,  and 
thieves  and  swindlers  who  pass.  Since  Silas  was 
defeated  for  Register  of  Deeds  he  has  become 
a  pessimist.  He  has  soured  on  the  town,  and 
when  he  sees  a  man,  Silas  thinks  only  of  the 
evil  that  man  has  done.  Silas  knows  all  men's 
weaknesses,  forgets  their  strength,  and  looking 
down  from  the  window  hates  his  fellow- 
creatures  for  the  wrong  they  have  done  him, 
or  the  wickedness  that  he  knows  of  them. 
He  has  never  given  our  reporters  a  kindly  item 
of  news  since  he  was  turned  down,  but  if  there 
is  a  discreditable  story  on  any  citizen  going 
around  we  hear  it  first  from  Silas,  and  if  we  do 


368  In  Our  Town 

not  print  it  he  says  we  have  taken  hush  money. 
If  we  have  to  print  it,  he  says  we  are  stirring  up 
strife.  Seeing  him  over  there,  looking  down  on 
the  town  which  to  him  is  accursed,  we  have 
often  thought  how  weary  God  must  be  looking 
at  the  world  and  knowing  so  much  better  than 
Silas  the  weakness  and  iniquity  of  men.  Some- 
times we  have  wondered  if  sin  is  really  as  im- 
portant as  Silas  thinks  it  is,  for  with  Silas  sin  is 
a  blot  that  effaces  a  man's  soul.  But  maybe  God 
sees  sin  only  as  a  blemish  that  men  may  over- 
come. Perhaps  God  is  not  so  discouraged  with 
us  as  Silas  is,  But  life  is  a  puzzle  at  most. 

Last  night  Aaron  Marlin  died.  He  had  lived 
for  ninety  years  in  this  world,  and  had  seen 
much  and  suffered  much,  and  has  died  as  a  child 
turns  to  sleep.  It  was  quiet  and  still  at  his 
home  among  the  elms  as  he  lay  in  his  coffin. 
The  mourners  spoke  in  low  and  solemn  tones, 
and  the  blinds  were  drawn  as  if  death  were 
shy.  As  he  lay  there  in  the  great  hush  that 
was  over  the  house,  there  passed  before  it  on 
the  sidewalk  two  who  spoke  as  low  as  the  mourn- 
ers, though  they  were  oblivious  to  the  house  of 
death.  They  trod  slowly,  and  a  great  calm  was 


In  Our  Town  369 

on  their  souls.  One  of  the  scribes  who  sets 
down  these  lines  stood  in  the  shadow  of  the 
doorway  pine-tree  and  saw  the  lovers  passing; 
he  felt  the  silence  and  the  sorrow  behind  the 
door  he  was  about  to  enter;  and  there  he  stood 
wondering — between  Death  and  Love — the 
End  and  the  Beginning  of  God's  great  mystery 
of  Life.  Now,  with  the  sense  of  that  great 
mystery  upon  him,  with  all  of  this  pied  skein  of 
life  about  him,  he  puts  down  his  pen,  and  looks 
out  of  the  window  as  the  thread  winds  down 
the  street. 

For  "  Thirty  "  is  in  for  the  day. 


THE  END 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


I 


